
Class "R 1 Jofr 

Book. >4 ^-VR .% 
Copyright N?. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSffi 



J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 
A BIOGRAPHY 



J.WILLIAM WHITE, M.D 



A BIOGRAPHY 



By AGNES REPPLIER 



With Portraits 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

(Cfre U*toer?ibe press CambriDge 

1919 



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COPYRIGHT, I919, BY AGNES REPPLIER 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



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1 A surgeon should be tender to the sick, 
honourable to his fellow surgeons, wise in 
his predictions, chaste, sober, pitiful, not 
covetous or extortionate. Rather should he 
take his wages in moderation, according to 
his work, and the wealth of his patient, and 
the issue of the disease, and his own worth." 

GUY DB CHAULIAC 
Grand Chirurgie, 1363 



CONTENTS 

I. Early Years 1 

II. The Voyage of the Hassler .... 9 

III. Blockley and the Penitentiary ... 29 

IV. Surgeon and Trooper 35 

V. Milestones 47 

VI. The Years that Count 64 

VII. Last Years of Surgery 90 

VIII. A Crisis Past 139 

IX. Four Busy Years 160 

X. Freedom 192 

XI. The Great War 226 

XII. The End 254 

Index 277 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

J. William White Frontispiece 

From a photograph (inscribed by the artist) of the portrait by 
John S. Sargent 

Dr. Agnew at his Clinic : Dr. White Assisting . 40 

From the painting by Thomas Eakins. Reproduced by the 
courtesy of the University of Pennsylvania from a copyright 
photograph by the Chappel Studio, Philadelphia 

J. William White 160 

From a photograph 



J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

CHAPTER I 
EARLY YEARS 

JAMES WILLIAM WHITE was born in Phila- 
delphia on the 2d of November, 1850. He was 
of English ancestry, the family dating back to one 
Henry White, who in 1649 left England, and came 
to Virginia. Four generations of Henry White's de- 
scendants lived in, or near, Albemarle, North Caro- 
lina. One of the fifth generation, James White, moved 
to Burlington, New Jersey. His son, William Rose 
White, married Mary Stockton, a descendant of 
Richard Stockton, signer of the Declaration of In- 
dependence. Their son, James William White, senior, 
practised medicine for many years in Philadelphia. 
He was a keen diagnostician, much sought in con- 
sultations, and he was also an able man of affairs, 
first president of the S. S. White Dental Manufactur- 
ing Company, whose products had as wide a market 
in Europe as in the United States. His strong and 
advanced opinions brought him both friends and 
foes. A firm abolitionist, he fought a lifelong and un- 
yielding battle against slavery. A broad-minded phi- 
lanthropist, he helped to found the Maternity Hos- 



2 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D 

pital at a time when, as has been well observed, 
"the existence of such an institution was considered 
an endorsement and encouragement of vice." His 
wife, Mary Ann McClaranan, was of New England 
parentage, and ably seconded a line of conduct more 
in accord with the prevailing sentiments of Massa- 
chusetts than of Pennsylvania. From both parents 
their distinguished son inherited those sharply defined 
and unyielding traits of character, which, buttressed 
with energy, ability, and resolution, made him so 
valuable a colleague and so dauntless an opponent. 

The boy was educated in the public schools of 
Philadelphia. He was a quick-tempered, warm- 
hearted, rough, impetuous child, as devoted to play 
as if the alphabet had never been invented, and to 
reading as if hockey and base-ball were unknown. 
The four beloved books which he read and re-read 
with ever renewed delight were the "Arabian Nights," 
"Pilgrim's Progress," "Don Quixote," and "Robin- 
son Crusoe," a heroic selection, but a natural one in 
those happy days, before a flood of inane juvenile 
stories had become the blight of the nursery and 
school-room. Certain chapters in these books gave 
the boy such intense pleasure that he confesses he 
approached them at each fresh perusal "with secret 
and exhilarating excitement." This seems to me one 
of the most illuminating statements I have ever 
heard upon the much discussed subject of children's 



EARLY YEARS 3 

reading. There is no doubt that only the book which 
is read many times, and which is read many times 
because it is worth many readings, has any place in a 
child's intellectual or emotional life; and no child who 
has ever responded to the stirring appeal of a great 
masterpiece has failed to experience the "secret and 
exhilarating excitement" with which he returns, 
step by step, cautious yet unafraid, to the Valley of 
Diamonds, or the Castle of Giant Despair, or the 
shining sands marked with the impress of a savage 
foot. 

When I was young, all well-brought-up little girls, 
and doubtless all well-brought-up little boys, who 
were permitted to visit their playmates, were cau- 
tioned by careful mothers that they must on no 
account open a book. To sit in a corner and read, 
instead of joining decorously in games, was held to 
be unpardonably rude. If Mrs. White gave this part- 
ing counsel to her son, it was of no avail. The temp- 
tation was too strong to be resisted. Little Bill would 
even improvise a game of hide-and-seek in order that 
he might slip away from his small cousins and com- 
panions, and, hidden behind a curtain, or on the 
back stairs, or in a closet, snatch a brief, uneasy 
joy from some hitherto unread story, which he was 
destined never to finish. The quickness of his obser- 
vation was marred by his extreme near-sightedness. 
If Mrs. Barbauld's old-fashioned tale, "Eyes and No 



4 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

Eyes," ever came his way, he must have sympathized 
with the little boy who passed by all the wonderful 
things which his comrade saw and commented upon. 
When he stumbled and blundered about, it was put 
down to the natural awkwardness of boyhood. It was 
only after he went to school that his fashion of hold- 
ing his book betrayed his imperfect vision. Once 
fitted with glasses, his strong eyes bore heavy and 
continuous strain until he died. 

In one regard the boy's life was a stormy one. A 
tendency to quarrel, and a still more fatal readiness 
to uphold his dispute by force, tried the patience of 
his teachers beyond endurance. He delighted in war- 
fare, and paid scant heed to causes or to consequences. 
Again and again they asked why such a little fire- 
eater should be retained in the ranks, and again and 
again the child's truthfulness, integrity, and stead- 
fast application to his studies pleaded for pardon. If, 
on a Monday morning, Mrs. WThite was seen accom- 
panying her abashed son to school, the neighbours 
said, "There goes Bill White's mother to make peace 
with his teachers. She has her hands full anyway." 

At thirteen the boy was ready for the High School, 
but was held to be too young, and obliged to wait a 
year for admittance. He was always a close student, 
partly because his quick intelligence detected some 
interest even in the routine of class-work, and partly 
because all studies were to him an obstacle to be 



EARLY YEARS 5 

overcome, a barrier at which he rode hard like a 
steeple-chaser. Why and how his high-school themes, 
or, as they were then humbly called, compositions, 
were preserved from the scrap-basket, it is impossi- 
ble to say. Perhaps his parents kept them, as little 
Tom Macaulay's parents kept their precious in- 
fant's hymns, and epics, and "Epitome of Univer- 
sal History." Perhaps Dr. White's noticeable and in- 
explicable distaste for destroying any scrap of paper 
dated from his boyhood, and he himself cherished 
these unloved and laborious productions. 

Be this as it may, the compositions were found in- 
tact among more important documents, very neatly 
copied, and as correct in spelling as in sentiment. 
They are like the compositions of school-boys all the 
world over, save that they do not suggest the hope- 
less boredom, the slurring haste, common to such 
tasks, and that they have a refreshing tendency to 
abandon the abstract for the concrete. The lad starts 
out to write about "Peace," and having expressed 
some stainlessly virtuous sentiments regarding its 
blessings and benefits, he branches joyously off to 
occasions which imperatively demand war. He inti- 
mates his disapproval of the Quaker attitude, and 
says in redundant school-boy language what Mr. 
Roosevelt has said in a few vigorous words, — that 
"a class of professional non-combatants is, in the 
long run, as hurtful to a community as a class of 



6 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

professional wrong-doers." In another paper he com- 
ments with regret upon the preponderance of study 
over athletics in the education of boys (which shows 
how long ago he went to school), and prophesies that 
a reign of dyspepsia will result from this mistaken 
attitude of teachers. Most characteristic of all is a 
composition on "Justice," in which he sweeps aside 
generalities to dwell feelingly on the case of a con- 
temporary murderer — a murderer long forgotten 
by the world — who killed eight people, and real- 
ized only eighteen dollars by the job. This man was 
hanged, which is duly pointed out as a triumph of 
justice (the boy entertained no sentimental theories 
on the subject of capital punishment); but what 
really absorbs his youthful mind is the disproportion 
between the means and the end. Eight murders, and 
eighteen dollars! He is stunned by this unpractical 
aspect of crime. 

When young White left the High School, his father 
sought to make his clever son a chemist; but this the 
lad opposed with all the determination of his char- 
acter. He took a year's course in chemistry with 
Hance Brothers and White; but a chemist he reso- 
lutely declined to be. His heart was set on medicine, 
and on surgery, as his chosen field of medicine. In 
vain the arguments — old as civilization — of slow 
progress and crowded professions were urged upon 
him. Peter the Great doubtless considered that the 



EARLY YEARS 7 

two lawyers whom he permitted to practise in his 
empire overcrowded it, and so hanged one of them. 
To his father's cautious counsels, the son had but 
one reply: "There is plenty of room where I intend 
to be." Inevitably he carried his point, and entered 
the Medical School of the University of Pennsyl- 
vania, a school then situated at Ninth and Chestnut 
Streets. Here, working con amove and with all his 
might, he spent three vigorous years, and spent them 
to such good effect that in 1871 he received the two 
degrees of Ph.D. and M.D., obtaining a full vote for 
both, and standing at the head of his class after a 
competitive examination. 

All this time his interest in athletics had kept pace 
with his interest in laboratory work and the lecture- 
room. His superb health, which he never spared, 
permitted him increasing physical and mental exer-^ 
tion. He could fill up every hour of the day, and 
study half the night, without fatigue, and without 
apparent strain. It was through the friendship of his 
preceptor, Dr. Horatio C. Wood, always keenly in- 
terested in so brilliant a student, that the young 
physician received at the outset of his career an ap- 
pointment which, lasting less than twelve months, 
influenced him for life, and was of far greater ad- 
vantage to him than he was then able to under- 
stand. 

Professor Benjamin Peirce, Superintendent of the 



8 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

United States Coast Survey, had fitted out a small 
steamer, the Hassler, for scientific explorations in 
the waters of the South Atlantic. He invited Profes- 
sor Agassiz to head the expedition, and Agassiz, al- 
though in failing health, eagerly accepted the post. 
Dr. Thomas Hill, former President of Harvard Col- 
lege, a man of seemingly limitless information, and 
Count Pourtales, of the Coast Survey, accompanied 
him on the voyage. To Dr. White, then just twenty- 
one, was offered a berth as hydrographic draughts- 
man, and it may be conceived with what enthusiasm 
he snatched this golden opportunity. "Agassiz says 
he can and will teach me more comparative anatomy 
in a month than I should ever learn in a year at 
college," he writes joyously to his father; adding 
with a canniness which was as natural to him as 
courage: "The Professor is down on the Darwinian 
theory, so, although I believe in it at present, I think 
I'll renounce it for a year. He is going to buy me a 
shot-gun, or rather let me buy it, and send him the 
bill. WTiich is the most expensive kind?" 

The last line is illustrative. There never was a time 
when Dr. WTiite did not stand ready to take all that 
life and opportunity had to offer; but there never 
was a time when he was not equally ready to give 
the best that was in him in return.', 



CHAPTER II 
THE VOYAGE OF THE HASSLER 

THERE are few things in this life so good as we 
think they are going to be, or so good as we 
think they have been. Our enjoyment is either an- 
ticipatory or reminiscent, because we cannot foresee 
the disagreeable possibilities of the future, and we 
remember with grateful distinctness the pleasures of 
the past. It is natural that Dr. White should have 
keenly relished the prospect of a most unusual voy- 
age, and that he should have looked back upon the 
nine months on the Hassler as a remarkably and 
exclusively happy period of his career. He did enjoy 
it with all the freshness of youth, and with all the 
appreciation of sense and intelligence. But the trip 
brought him, as it brought more important members 
of the party, a full measure of vexation and disap- 
pointment. In the first place, the expedition, which 
was to have started in August, 1871, did not get off 
until December. Apparently it went then, only be- 
cause the money appropriated for the work would 
have been returned to the treasury if the Hassler 
had not sailed within the fiscal year. Dr. White spent 
the month of November in Boston, hoping every day 
to be off the next, and fretting over the delay which 



10 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

eventually curtailed the voyage, compelling Agassiz 
to relinquish the Falkland Islands, and the Rio Ne- 
gro and Santa Cruz Rivers, to his inextinguishable 
regret. Moreover, the deep-sea dredging, from which 
he hoped to obtain important results, failed because 
of defective apparatus. The hauls from the greatest 
depths were invariably lost. 

Mrs. Agassiz, who accompanied her husband, kept, 
under his direction, a diary, descriptive and scientific, 
which was published after his death, and made dull 
reading. Dr. Hill wrote a series of letters to the "New 
York Tribune." Dr. White, with characteristic self- 
confidence, invaded, before sailing, the office of the 
"New York Herald," and actually persuaded the 
managing editor, Mr. Cannery, not only to accept 
him as a special correspondent, but to pay him 
twenty dollars a column, instead of the modest 
ten which was the paper's customary rate. These 
"Herald" letters became a heavy burden as the 
young physician's duties on the Hassler grew more 
and more imperative. Often he had no time to write, 
and oftener still he had nothing to write about. Al- 
ways he found it hard to tell enough to satisfy the 
paper, without telling more than Agassiz wished told. 
He confesses in his diary that he envies Dr. Hill (who 
received thirty dollars a column from the "Tribune") 
the ease and intentness with which he scribbled his 
interminable pages. "He does not have to consult 



THE VOYAGE OF THE HASSLER 11 

any geographical dictionaries, encyclopedias, or other 
useful abominations. He just sits down, takes his port- 
folio on his knee, and draws out of his antiquated, 
perverse, crotchety, obstinate, but well-filled head all 
that he wants, and more too. I have n't seen any of 
his letters, but I know they are so much better than 
anything I can write, that the very thought dis- 
courages me." 

Nevertheless, the correspondence with the "Her- 
ald" was continued until the end of the voyage. It 
would no more have occurred to Dr. White to vol- 
untarily relinquish a job he had undertaken to do 
than to voluntarily relinquish existence. The letters 
— which have been preserved — are sober, intelli- 
gent narratives, written in the forceful, vigorous 
style he retained through life, and marked, it must 
be confessed, by that reluctance to leave anything 
untold which characterized all he ever wrote. They 
were printed by the "Herald" in type so ruinously 
fine as to suggest collusion with the oculists and 
opticians of New York, and provided with fantas- 
tic and sensational headlines, calculated to attract 
readers who would not have known Agassiz from 
Audubon. "Millions of Skeletons at the Bottom of 
the Sea." "Beautiful Tempest-Defying Creatures 
Dancing on the Crests of the Waves." "Oysters a 
Foot in Diameter." "Hydroids, the Socialists of the 
Sea." This is the way a valiant newspaper strove to 



1% J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

arouse the intellectual curiosity of the public. Even 
solid paragraphs were broken up to admit such head- 
ings as "Never before seen by Human Eyes." "The 
Skeletons." "Perished by Thousands." "Died a 
Heretic." Naturally the most apathetic old gentle- 
man droning over his newspaper wondered a bit who 
died a heretic, who perished by thousands, and what 
on earth the expedition was about. 

It is amusing to note that many years later, Dr. 
White, addressing the Harvard Club, dwelt feelingly 
upon the anguish of spirit which the "Herald's" 
headlines had caused his sensitive youth. He had 
aspired to be weighty and scientific, and the paper 
had presented him to its readers as a second Jules 
Verne. All his life, notwithstanding certain stormy 
episodes, he remained on fairly good terms with 
newspapers. No man was less inclined to the stupid 
and vulgar error of censuring the press. No man bet- 
ter understood its difficulties, or recognized more 
clearly its incontestable merits. His dedication — a 
year before he died — of the "Text-Book of the War 
for Americans" to the press of the United States, 
proved that he rightly regarded our best newspapers 
as intelligent leaders of the nation's thought, and 
upright guardians of the nation's honour. He winced 
under the "Herald's" sensationalism, but he grasped 
its motives, and forgave. 

Once launched on its voyage, the Hassler became 



THE VOYAGE OF THE HASSLER 13 

a scene of incessant activity, and the hydrographic 
draughtsman — a title which might have been roughly 
interpreted as man-of-all-work — was kept busily em- 
ployed. How he ever found time to do all the jobs 
which Agassiz gave him to do, and most of the jobs 
which should have been done by older and less stren- 
uous men, write the interminable letters to the 
"Herald," keep up an energetic correspondence with 
his family — to say nothing of a diary — and study 
French and Spanish with zest, remains a mystery. 
His days always seemed to hold more than the twen- 
ty-four hours allotted to ordinary mortals. 

Every calm morning, Agassiz gave a lecture on 
deck, using a rubber blanket stretched on four sticks 
as a blackboard. These lectures Dr. White copied 
"smoothly," and he also undertook, before they had 
been out a week, to copy the log. When the ship was 
quarantined in Montevideo Harbour, he had himself 
awakened every three hours in the night, to make his 
observations on surface water, Agassiz being eager to 
test the influence of winds and tides upon the admix- 
ture of fresh water in the bay. The incessant dredg- 
ings kept him hard at work, examining the specimens, 
and dropping everything of value into alcohol. Three 
thousand five hundred gallons of alcohol were used 
during the voyage. Agassiz's curiosity was so in- 
satiable, and his delight over a good haul was so 
radiant, that his young assistant could not forbear 



14 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

a joke (a variant of Cleopatra's famous trick), and 
slipped one day a polished chicken bone into the 
dredging net before it was cast. Up in time came the 
net, and up came the bone. A sailor grasped it, and 
carried it to Agassiz, who rejected the strange speci- 
men with a smile, divining the jest, and asking no 
questions. 

Sunday brought scant respite from labour. Dr. 
White writes to his father that Agassiz was "very 
religious," but would dredge seven days in the week, 
deeming it a work of necessity, and expected others 
to do the same. An average Sunday was spent in 
dredging until noon, photographing the specimens 
until dusk, and listening in the evening to a lecture 
on "Positivism" from the omniscient Dr. Hill, whose 
custom it was to interpret metaphysics in the terms 
of a mathematician, somewhat to the disgust of 
Agassiz, who hated mathematics, and who was nat- 
urally disposed to disagree with what he did not 
understand. 

It must be remembered that Dr. White was not a 
marine biologist, and that he had none of the noble 
but somewhat overwhelming enthusiasm common to 
this department of science. He threw his whole soul 
into his work because slackness was impossible to 
his nature, and he tried to share Agassiz's wild delight 
when — off the coast of Patagonia — they caught 
some uncommonly ugly little fishes which could swim 



THE VOYAGE OF THE HASSLER 15 

head first or tail first, "as a matter of indifference." 
"There was once a folio volume written on a single 
imperfect specimen of these fish," he reports proudly, 
"and they are still very rare; so the Professor's 
pleasure is unbounded." It was another red-letter 
day which showed them their first steamer-duck pad- 
dling expertly on the rough water, and very often 
the fossils secured were of inestimable value. When 
in ill-luck, their ropes broke, their hauls were lost, 
the bathometer let down for deep-sea sounding never 
came up again, and the result of four hours' dredg- 
ing in six hundred and eighty fathoms of water 
in Panama Bay was "a few worms and some blue 
mud." If there was an element of monotony in their 
labour, there was a glorious diversity in its reward. 

Photographing the specimens was every whit as 
difficult as securing them. The art of photography 
was then, if not in its infancy, at least in its early 
and untrammelled youth. Dr. White was not an 
expert at the work, but Dr. Hill gradually resigned 
it into his hands, hating its messiness, and heart- 
broken over its results. To photograph live Ascidians 
in a basin of water on the heaving deck of a small 
ship would be no facile task to-day; but with the 
imperfect apparatus of 1872, wet plates, time ex- 
posure, and a persevering but inexperienced photog- 
rapher, the percentage of failures was ruinous. 
Nevertheless, Dr. White went steadily on with this 



16 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

unloved task until he might be said to have con- 
quered it. Twelve hours out of the twenty-four were 
sometimes consumed taking the photographs, de- 
veloping them, and packing them away. At Rio de 
Janeiro he carried his negatives to the laboratory of 
Signor Leuzinger, where conditions were exception- 
ally good, and worked there in the heavy heat for 
ten hours, without intermission, and without food. 
It was a heroic test of endurance. Zealotry could 
have done no more. 

Besides photographing specimens, it was Dr. 
White's more difficult duty to take pictures of the 
coast, and of all objects of beauty and interest which 
might be desirable for stereopticon slides. This in- 
volved such diverting experiences that I quote a long 
extract from the diary, partly because it is really 
funny, and partly because it might have been written 
at fifty instead of at twenty-one. Those who knew 
Dr. White only in later life can recognize the familiar 
turns of speech, the ease and sharpness of expression. 

"At Sea. Off the Island of Chiloe. Sunday, April 
7th, 1872. This morning I had an instance of what has 
been one of my great troubles in photography, — the 
fact that it is impossible to make some people under- 
stand what can and what can't be done with a camera. 
It would be amusing if it were not annoying. I wak- 
ened between six and seven o'clock, looked out of my 
port-hole, saw that we were at some distance from 



THE VOYAGE OF THE HASSLER 17 

shore, pulled off a leaf from my calendar, disclosing 
'Domingo, April 7th,' said a word of good morning to 
you all by looking over the photographic album, and 
then settled myself comfortably to read a new novel 
(new when we started) which Mrs. Agassiz had re- 
quested me to pronounce upon before beginning it 
herself. 

"I hadn't enjoyed this very long when my cur- 
tains were pulled aside, and the Professor's face was 
visible. He made a movement to retire, saying some- 
thing about having thought that 'perhaps the pho- 
tographic apparatus was ready.' I told him that 
it would be ready in exactly ten minutes if it were 
necessary, but that I did n't believe there was any- 
thing to photograph. 'Oh, yes, something of the 
greatest interest, if it would not be too much trouble.' 
I turned out, dressed, and was on deck with my 
camera and a coated and sensitized plate in about 
the time I mentioned. Then I found that the nearest 
objects were hills several miles off, which hills had, 
on the focusing glass, an elevation of about the 
tenth of an inch; and that the intensely interesting 
'something' consisted of white spots on those hills, 
barely discernible without the aid of the glass. I might 
as well have been called upon to photograph a fly- 
speck on Girard College from the State House steeple. 

"I did n't say much. The old gentleman had been 
greatly disappointed at our not going up to the 



18 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

island, as he thereby missed an opportunity of hav- 
ing a slap at Darwin on the Glacial Theory, and I 
did n't want to worry him any more. So I went 
through the motions, exposed three plates, and told 
him I did n't believe I had secured what he wanted, 
but that I had done all that was possible. I then 
stowed away the apparatus. In fifteen minutes he 
saw a volcanic range on the other side, and at about 
twice the distance, of which he wanted a picture. I 
unpacked, repeated the process, made a couple of 
plates on which the hills would have to be looked for 
with a compound microscope, and stowed away the 
things. In half an hour he discovered two peaks, 
snow-covered, and almost exactly the same colour as 
the sky behind them, so that it was difficult to make 
out their line of demarcation, even with strong 
glasses. I told him they would both take the same 
colour, that the mountains would n't show, and that, 
in addition, the vessel was beginning to make con- 
siderable motion. He did n't seem persuaded, how- 
ever, that it was impossible, so I again unpacked, 
and demonstrated it to him. I caught all the ripples 
on the waves without a sign of the peaks. Then I 
packed up, and registered a vow — which I kept — 
not to take the things out again unless we were in 
smooth water, within a hundred yards of shore." 

In what odd moments of his crowded day, Dr. 
White snatched the leisure to write the diary which 



THE VOYAGE OF THE HASSLER 19 

he kept for his family, as well as letters of amazing 
length and minuteness, no one will ever know. There 
is no sign of haste or scrimping in his voluminous 
pages. He tells his mother that the washerwoman at 
St. Thomas starched his handkerchiefs and towels, 
and left his collars and cuffs limp. He tells his grand- 
mother everything he had to eat at a dinner party at 
Talcahuano, because that was what she liked best to 
hear. If, at the close of the trip, he omits the menu 
of a dinner given by Mr. Leland Stanford, then Gov- 
ernor of California, he pleads in excuse that the en- 
tertainment lasted from six to nine, and that he was 
too torpid when he left the table to remember any- 
thing about it. He makes careful notes throughout 
the voyage of all that might interest his little brother, 
Louis, then six years old. He writes to this child 
about the island of Juan Fernandez and Alexander 
Selkirk; and about a big flying fish which leaped with 
such violence to the deck of the Hassler that it 
knocked over a cabin boy; and about the trained 
canaries he saw at Rio de Janeiro, which obstinately 
refused to tell his fortune, though they told the for- 
tunes of the Rio de Janeirans all day long. He gives 
him the kind of good advice which a little boy rejects 
from his parents, but receives docilely from a big 
brother. Louis is not to fight for the sake of fighting. 
"If the other boy is smaller than you are, it is a 
mean thing to do, and if he is bigger, he might make 



20 J. WrLLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

you wish you had n't." The whole duty of little boy- 
hood is compressed into this one golden sentence: "I 
want you to be a good boy, and mind father and 
mother and grandmother, and keep your feet dry, 
and keep off the car-tracks, and not eat pie-crust or 
pork." 

In his clamorous demand for home letters, Dr. 
White does not exempt even the six-year-old. It 
appears that Louis can write a little; therefore he 
should write, though the forgiving brother makes 
allowance for his ineptitude, and answers an unsent 
baby scrawl in this really charming fashion. 

Dear Louis: 

Although I have n't yet received that letter which 
Mother told me you had written, I thought I had 
better answer it just the same as if I had got it. I 
guess I know what was in it. You told me how you 
and Waltie played, and how Maltie — not Waltie — 
had fits, and how you were a bad boy sometimes, 
and a good boy nearly always, and how Grand- 
mother fed the pigeons, and the cats, and the rats, 
and everything else that would eat, and how much 
money you got when you were sick, and how you 
dirtied your new suit, and how you ran to fires, 
played in the mud, rode with the milkman, plagued 
Grandmother, teased Rosie, worried Mother, and 
behaved yourself when Father was around. If you 






THE VOYAGE OF THE HASSLER 21 

did n't write all this, I am sure you might have done 
so without telling a great many stories. 

One fact is evidenced by the Hassler diary. It is 
never divulged, but may be read between every line. 
The diarist is horribly homesick. This is his first 
journey, and the familiar scenes and figures he has 
left tug at his heart-strings. He is maddened by the 
irregularity of the South American mails, and ap- 
pears to have spent hours at Rio de Janeiro trying 
to worry the hot and exasperated post-office clerks 
into giving him letters which were not there to give. 
When one does come, it has two fifteen-cent stamps 
on it, and he has to pay twenty-four cents more; but, 
although habitually careful of money, he declares 
joyfully that it is worth fifty dollars. Later on, he 
records without a tremor that the Chilean Govern- 
ment asks twenty-five cents for every letter which 
passes through its post-office, and that his are always 
double weight. Whenever the ship's provisions run 
low, his homesickness is augmented by the cravings 
of his youthful appetite for the good Philadelphia 
fare, so long untasted, so ardently recalled. For a 
week in Otter Bay, scientists and sailors were alike 
reduced to pork and beans, — pork and beans for 
breakfast, dinner, and supper. At this period the 
young doctor's letters resemble nothing so much as 
the "Homesick Glutton's Dream." In vain he tries 



22 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

to solace a free and hungry hour with "Aurora 
Leigh." His soul rejects this fare as unmistakably as 
his stomach rejects the pork and beans. In vain Mrs. 
Agassiz recommends Browning's "Dramatic Poems." 
"I don't think much of them," is his uncritical, but 
not unnatural, verdict. The Hassler library seems 
to have been a somewhat haphazard collection of 
books, and Dr. White — a swift and omnivorous 
reader — skimmed over its fiction in the first few 
weeks, tossed aside its poetry, lingered appreciatively 
over Dr. Holmes's "Autocrat," and Macaulay's 
"Essays," and finally settled down to "Gray's 
Anatomy," and a Spanish grammar. He knew what 
promise they held. 

The grammar, indeed, bore fruit a hundredfold, 
for, whenever the Hassler was in port, its earnest 
student found himself fit for conversation, lively if 
limited, with all the pretty girls he met. He never 
suffered his courage to be daunted by an imperfect 
vocabulary; but eked out his Spanish with French, 
and his French with English, and his English with 
the universal language of youth; making himself 
invariably understood, and enjoying the abundant 
hospitality of the South. His pleasure in being on 
shore was just as keen, whether he were climbing a 
mountain peak at Tijucas, or eating a highly civilized 
dinner at Talcahuano, or listening to the chanting of 
a tobacco-begging Fuegian chief, or hunting iguanas 



THE VOYAGE OF THE HASSLER 23 

for Agassiz on Charles Island, or shooting, or fishing, 
or collecting butterflies, or photographing a glacier. 
"Agassiz knows all about fishes, except the way to 
catch them," is a record in the diary. "He gives 
directions concerning hooks, and bait, and nets, and 
drawing seines, which are listened to respectfully, 
but never followed." 

At Panama, Dr. White accompanied Agassiz on 
a specimen-collecting expedition which lasted three 
days. They went by rail to San Pablo, and the diary 
gives a minute account of the trip, dwelling especially 
on the hospitality of the San Pablo station-master, 
a Mr. Lesley from Bangor, Maine, and a vastly 
important official. This young man had married a 
school-teacher from Belfast, Maine, and had made 
her a home in the wilderness. Their shining house 
and neat garden were like a bit of New England 
transferred to the Isthmus. Mrs. Lesley's good cook- 
ing, her raised biscuits and excellent coffee, are 
feelingly described. A cribbage board and a five- 
months-old baby complete the picture, which is 
bright with comfort and contentment. Yet at the 
foot of the pretty garden flowed the Chagres River, 
with alligators basking in the mud; and before the 
front door stretched a tropical forest, full of ana- 
condas, and wild hogs, and tarantulas, and vampire 
bats, — evil neighbours for the little household. The 
snakes did sometimes eat her young chickens, Mrs. 



24 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

Lesley confessed ruefully, but had no other word of 
dissatisfaction with her lonely and perilous life. 

Throughout the nine months' voyage, Dr. White 
remained on cordial terms with all his associates. If 
he were sometimes irritated by Dr. Hill's dogmatism, 
he respected his wide and accurate knowledge. Count 
Pourtales and Dr. Steindachner he liked. Captain 
Johnson he pronounced a "good sailor, an honest 
gentleman, and a kind friend." To Mrs. Johnson 
and to Mrs. Agassiz he became increasingly attached, 
finding that their presence on the Hassler added 
materially to his pleasure and well-being. Mrs. 
Agassiz he commended strongly, because she was a 
lady without nerves, who did not scream when in- 
cidents of a mildly terrifying order disturbed the 
usual tranquillity. Of Agassiz he has given us, both 
in his diary and in an admirable paper written after 
the Professor's death, a consistently charming and 
sympathetic picture. He can find no words keen 
enough to describe this great scientist's noble de- 
mocracy, — which was like the democracy of Scott, 
whom men called a feudalist, — his kindness, his fluent 
English, the simplicity and readiness with which he 
imparted his knowledge (to those who sought it only), 
his noble generosity and wise economy. "Agassiz," he 
wrote, "is just as free from any pretence or assump- 
tion of superiority as if he were a cabin boy." 

Toward the close of the voyage, some one pro- 



THE VOYAGE OF THE HASSLER 25 

posed to teach the Professor the beguiling and irritat- 
ing game of solitaire. Agassiz, who had never touched 
a card in his life, fell a victim to the spell. "He spent 
hours glued to the cabin table, dealing and sorting 
the cards, ejaculating in three or four languages, and 
becoming as much excited over the turns as over a 
new tadpole." From solitaire — an easy descent to 
Avernus — Agassiz fell to playing poker for gun- 
wads; and Heaven knows what further temptations 
lay in wait for this straight-living scientific gentle- 
man, if the harbour of San Francisco had not put an 
end to the sport. The last record made of him in the 
diary is a testimony to his generous good-nature. 
Tired and ill, he consented to give a lecture at the 
Sacramento Literary Institute, and his gratified 
audience presented him with a gold-headed stick. 
The Hassler reached San Francisco on the 24th of 
August, 1872. Fifteen months later, Agassiz died. 

One eventful dispute roughened the smooth friend- 
liness of the expedition, and lent — to Dr. White at 
least — an added interest in the trip. It was no part 
of his duty to look after the Hassler's sick. Dr. Pit- 
kin was the ship's surgeon. But Dr. Pitkin was 
sometimes ill himself, and, when this happened, 
Dr. White dosed the crew, and mended their broken 
heads. Their manifest preference for his services was 
due probably to his friendliness, to his open and easy 
manner, and to the confidence which his abrupt 



26 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

decisiveness seldom failed to inspire. The boatswain 
told him that the sailors waited their chance to con- 
sult him; and, as he had himself no great belief in 
Dr. Pitkin's remedies, this seemed to him a sensible 
precaution on the sailors' part. Dr. Pitkin thought 
otherwise; and the disagreement between the two 
physicians was brought to a head when Paymaster 
Dee, hunting for shells on the wet sands of Mag- 
dalena Bay, came back with his feet and legs badly 
blistered by sunburn. Dr. Pitkin applied glycerine 
and carbolic acid. Dr. White urged the use of phenol. 
Dr. Pitkin scouted phenol. Dr. White contemned in 
forceful language glycerine and carbolic acid. The 
contest reminds us of the ever memorable battle 
waged by Dr. Benjamin Rush, in the Yellow Fever 
summer of 1793, in behalf of mercury and jalap, 
against bark and wine. Finally the contestants 
agreed upon a compromise, or rather upon an experi- 
ment. Each took possession of one of the paymaster's 
legs, and treated it in his own fashion, the patient 
acquiescing because he was not consulted. The result 
was a triumph for Dr. White. In twenty-four hours 
the phenol leg was healed, while the glycerine leg 
remained swollen and inflamed. Whether the pay- 
master then decided which treatment he preferred, 
or whether Dr. Pitkin continued to have his own 
way with his appointed leg, the diary does not say. 
In San Francisco came the final separation. Dr. 



THE VOYAGE OF THE HASSLER 27 

White parted from friends whom he had learned to 
value, and made his own way home. With his cus- 
tomary good fortune, he reached Salt Lake City at 
the time of a great Mormon conference, and heard 
Brigham Young and other eminent saints preach to 
huge congregations. The prophet was authoritative, 
censorious, omniscient. He protested against his fol- 
lowers seeking legal or medical advice, instead of 
asking counsel of those who were divinely appointed 
to direct them. "Lawyers," he said, "are very good 
in their place, but I've never been able to discover 
where the devil their place is, unless it's in Hell." 
Doctors were little more in favour. Young vehe- 
mently reproached his female flock for their obstinacy 
in employing obstetricians, assuring them that they 
and their babies would be just as well off if they 
would dispense entirely with medical service. He 
gave the offending ladies a great many sound and 
intimate exhortations on the subject of their health. 
He inveighed against the extravagance and immod- 
esty of their dress, declaring he could see their garters 
when they walked. (Can it be possible that these dis- 
ciplined wives wore tilters!) He accused the men of 
withholding their tithes. And he clamoured furiously 
for money. 

The robust sanctimoniousness of Salt Lake City 
was evidenced in the petty details of life. Dr. White, 
staring at the strange medley of stuff in a shop win- 



28 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

dow, heard the shopman urging a customer to buy a 
fifty-cent shell, on which was engraved the Lord's 
Prayer. "It will be a moral power in your family," 
he said unctuously. "Your children will be eager to 
learn from it. And you know" (patronizingly) "it 
really is a beautiful prayer." 

We cannot overestimate the value of a nine months' 
voyage with distinguished associates to a man of Dr. 
WThite's deeply impressionable mind. The scientific 
knowledge he acquired counted for much. The 
glimpses of Latin civilization, broadening as they did 
the strictly local standards of the home-bred youth, 
counted for more. The daily intercourse with scholars 
counted for most of all. If, throughout his life, Dr. 
WTiite loved success, he had also the finer qualities 
which enabled him to revere achievement. His per- 
sonal ambitions remained unchanged; but he under- 
stood and appreciated the higher aspirations of men 
who pursue truth for truth's sake, expecting no com- 
mon rewards, and receiving none. This is illustrated 
by a page of the diary in which he notes down the fact 
that Agassiz's salary at Harvard was for sixteen years 
$1500; that it never rose above $3500; and that he 
had working under him twenty-five assistants, some 
of them men of fair scientific attainments, whose 
aggregate salaries came to $14,000, an average of 
$560. "Methinks," the young physician comments 
dryly, "that science is not my vocation." 



CHAPTER III 
BLOCKLEY AND THE PENITENTIARY 

ABSORPTION in the present never meant for 
Dr. White indifference to the future. He knew 
very well what a hard climb lay before him, and 
how much depended on the start. He knew also the 
avenues to advancement, and who controlled the 
right of way. While yet on board the Hassler, we 
find him making strenuous efforts to obtain an ap- 
pointment as resident physician in the Philadelphia 
Hospital at Blockley. This post he received imme- 
diately after his return, and held for a year, resigning 
it in 1873 for the more important and far more inter- 
esting position of resident physician in the Eastern 
Penitentiary. He continued, however, to visit Block- 
ley, and for three years laboured in this double field, 
acquiring a wide experience of men and things, of 
pauperism and criminology, of trustees and council- 
men, of disease and death. His road was not an easy 
one, and was made no easier by the breadth of his 
views, the quickness of his temper, and the unyielding 
character of his professional conscience. The Board 
of Inspectors of the Penitentiary was a conservative 
body, and its members were not in the habit of hav- 
ing their duties expounded to them by an impetuous, 



SO J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

impatient, and singularly clear-headed young doctor. 
They did not like it, and Dr. White did not like 
indifference and distrust. His connection with the 
prison might have been abruptly terminated, and 
his career injured, had it not been for the president 
of the Board, Richard Vaux, formerly Mayor of 
Philadelphia, and the treasurer, John M. Maris. 
These two men gave him their steadfast support. Mr. 
Vaux was himself an ultra conservative, and many 
of the resident's views were distasteful to him; but, 
being an able man, he liked ability, and, being a fear- 
less man, he liked fearlessness. If he did not believe 
in Dr. WThite's opinions, he believed sincerely and 
wisely in Dr. White; and men, not systems, counted 
in his scale. 

There are few records of these strenuous years, but 
there is a startling reminder of them in a story 
written long afterwards by Dr. WThite, and entitled 
"Some Terminal Episodes in the History of a Crim- 
inal Family." It was never printed, being no more 
than a hurried and roughly put together sketch, 
meant to be read at a Christmas party, and at once 
too crude and too gruesome for publication. But it is 
a vivid picture of Philadelphia in 1874, and of con- 
ditions which we would just as soon forget. Prison 
reform was then in its timid infancy. Nobody called 
a criminal a patient, or crime a malady. Pageants 
and plays were unknown within the Penitentiary 



BLOCKLEY AND THE PENITENTIARY 31 

walls. The appeal to honour and reason had not yet 
revealed these qualities surviving in the felon's soul. 
Fewer convicts became honest men; but, on the other 
hand, no convict went out blackberrying, and forgot 
to return. The city's politics disgraced its civilization. 
The justly celebrated "Board of Buzzards" stole the 
roof off the almshouse, — a theft famous in the annals 
of corruption. The paupers' bodies were dug up from 
the Potter's Field, and sold to the medical schools 
for dissection. When the supply ran short, the stu- 
dents performed this task for themselves, and drove 
in triumph through the streets with the stolen corpse 
propped up stiffly beside them. A snow-storm stopped 
the traffic of the city. Decent citizens jested at the 
shameful improbity it was their business to correct. 
Mr. Thomas Lawson observed many years later that 
it would be easier to float down Hell on a wax wafer 
than to clean up Philadelphia politics. Had he been 
contemplating conditions in the reign of the "Buz- 
zards," he would have used — or would have en- 
deavoured to use — a more vigorous expression. 

The incidents in Dr. White's grisly little tale were 
borrowed, for the most part, from his experience in 
the Penitentiary. There he found the woman who 
had kept a baby farm, and who had closed out the 
business by killing all its inmates, including two of 
her own offspring. There he found the man who had 
smothered his mother-in-law, and buried her, with 



32 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

his wife's assistance, under the kitchen hearth. The 
couple had gone on living amicably in the room, 
cooking and eating in undismayed proximity to the 
corpse. There he found the Baptist negro who, after 
a heated argument with his cell-mate, a Methodist 
negro, had ended the controversy by murdering the 
offending heretic. The crowded condition of the Pen- 
itentiary compelled the housing of two prisoners in 
one cell. The Methodist may have been the keener 
doctrinaire, but the Baptist was the stronger man. 
He vindicated his beliefs with the help of his shoe- 
maker's knife, and slept composedly by his victim's 
side for the remainder of the night. Through all this 
dreadful narrative runs the vigorous spirit of youth. 
The writer is not faint at heart over the spectacle of 
vice, and crime, and wretchedness. He moves from 
the Penitentiary to Blockley, from Blockley to the 
dissecting-room, from the dissecting-room back to 
the Penitentiary; fronting the wretched sights, and 
sounds, and smells, as he fronts the snowdrifts piled 
to his knee, and the absence of breakfast and dinner. 
It was all in the day's work. 

With Edward Townsend, the warden of the Peni- 
tentiary, and with Michael Cassidy, the principal 
overseer, Dr. White was always on good terms. 
Cassidy, who became warden in 1881, and held the 
post for many years, was a strict disciplinarian, 
devoid of sentiment, and possibly of sympathetic 



BLOCKLEY AND THE PENITENTIARY 33 

understanding; but he was humane, rational, and 
immaculately just. If the prison he ruled offered no 
attraction to criminals, neither was it a place where 
hearts were cowed, and hope was lost. The young 
resident took a friendly interest in many of the con- 
victs, and was on terms of intimacy with at least 
one, — the famous "Irish giant," Ned Baldwin, who 
stood six feet seven, and who was serving a sentence 
for assault and battery committed when he was 
drunk. From this man Dr. White took sparring 
lessons, asking no mercy, and receiving none. The 
course of instruction gave him many a bruised and 
broken hour, but he profited by it all his life. 

A less agreeable experience was an encounter with 
an ex-bruiser, to whom he gave bitter offence by re- 
fusing to allow him a sick diet. The man swore hide- 
ously that as soon as he was released from prison he 
would celebrate his freedom by cutting out the resi- 
dent's heart, a threat which left Dr. White wholly un- 
ruffled, but which he was destined to remember. A few 
years later he was exercising with Indian clubs at the 
gymnasium of " Professor " Billy McLean when the 
door opened, and the ex-bruiser silently entered. The 
doctor held fast to his clubs (wishing heartily they 
were dumb-bells), and waited. The man stared for an 
instant, then recognized his companion, and smiled 
broadly. "Hallo, Doctor, glad to see you," he said 
with democratic cordiality, and went about his busi- 



34 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

ness. Had he been a Sicilian! But Americans are ill- 
disposed to rancour or revenge. 

When Dr. White left the prison, and set up house- 
keeping for himself on Sixteenth Street, he gave a 
released convict his "chance." The man was an in- 
telligent negro who had served a twelve years' sen- 
tence for killing his wife. Dr. White took him for 
a servant, trusted him, and slept alone in the house 
with him for months. Could the unfortunate creature 
have remained sober, he might have repaid this 
trust with fidelity; but he drank, and, under the in- 
fluence of liquor, stole. His master caught him in the 
act, kicked him downstairs, found to his infinite 
relief that this vigorous treatment had sobered with- 
out injuring him, and turned the rogue out of doors, — 
thus severing what he thought was his last connec- 
tion with the Penitentiary. The fates ruled other- 
wise. Nine years later he was appointed by Governor 
Pattison to be one of the Inspectors of the institution 
he knew so well, and had so faithfully served. 



CHAPTER IV 
SURGEON AND TROOPER 

IN 1876 Dr. White spread his sails to a favouring 
wind, and started upon his long, brilliant, and 
arduous career as a practising surgeon in Phila- 
delphia. He was at this time Assistant Demonstrator 
of Practical Surgery in the Medical School of the 
University of Pennsylvania, and also Assistant to the 
Surgical Dispensary Service. Within two years he 
received two posts, differing widely in their scope, in 
the surroundings they involved, and in the duties 
they entailed; but equally welcome to his keen and 
many-sided ambition. In 1877 he was elected sur- 
geon to the First City Troop, and in 1878 he was 
given the lectureship on Venereal Diseases in the 
University's Spring Session. The lectureship was in 
line with his professional advancement, with his 
sober studies, and reasonable aspirations. The posi- 
tion in the City Troop was a daring venture, upon 
which relatives and friends (cautious rather than 
sympathetic) were disposed to look askance. It 
meant entrance upon a career more gay than useful, 
more vivid than strenuous, more pleasant than prof- 
itable. Dr. White was only twenty-seven years old, 
little known in his profession, and utterly unknown 



36 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

outside of it, without backing, and without fortune. 
He gave great promise as a surgeon, but he was still 
on the lowest rung of the ladder. Every step depended 
upon his own discretion, no less than upon his own 
ability. It seemed to many that he was imperilling 
an honourable future for the sake of a very agreeable 
present. 

The temptation was irresistible. The golden chance 
which fortune flung in his way was a challenge to 
temerity, and the young, soberly bred doctor was the 
last man in Christendom to reckon dangers too closely. 
"The threat which runs through all the winning 
music of the world" was to him a lure rather than a 
menace. His zest for the feast of life was to the end 
undimmed and unvitiated. I cannot do better than 
quote here a paragraph from the thoughtful and ad- 
mirable paper of Thomas Robins, which aptly illus- 
trates this phase of his friend's advancement: 

"There were always two Whites. One was the man 
who burned the midnight oil, the man ambitious for 
professional success, the man whose wide reading and 
studious turn of mind made him an effective teacher, 
and a master of the intricacies of a difficult science. 
That was the WTiite of the profession. The other 
Wfhite was a light-hearted boy, loving out-door life, 
gay companionship, the society of men of the world, 
the sports of the country gentleman, the midnight 
chimes. That was the White who quickly acquired 



SURGEON AND TROOPER 37 

the wide acquaintance, and bound to himself, as with 
hooks of steel, the affections of many men, and the 
absolute devotion of a group who cared nothing for 
his professional attainments, but who were willing to 
trust any man who rode a steeplechase as fearlessly 
as did the spectacled young surgeon. To his last hour, 
White never knew which of the two lives he liked 
the better, — the one which threw him with scien- 
tific men, or the other which allied him with the 
votaries of Pan." 

Forty years ago the passion for athletics was less 
common, and far less glorified, than it is to-day. Dr. 
White's prowess in this field was held to be, at best, 
an eccentricity; at worst, a danger signal. A physician 
was then expected to amble around from patient to 
patient, from office to lecture room or dispensary; to 
drive — when he could afford it — a covered buggy 
with a negro boy to hold the horse; to grow round- 
shouldered stooping over his desk; to have a good 
bedside manner, and a list of acceptable stories. He 
laboured under the disadvantage of not being able 
to acquire a family practice until he was married, 
and of not being able to marry until he had a practice. 
He was held to book almost as rigidly as a clergyman. 
Dr. White presented a sharp contrast to this recog- 
nized and familiar type. He was just beginning to 
"make good"; yet he spent his spare hours with 
young, gay, light-hearted men, sparred with pugilists, 



38 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

rode hard and well, and swam from the Atlantic City 
lighthouse to the "elephant," nine miles along the 
coast. Perhaps if he had possessed the lazy good- 
humour which so often accompanies great physical 
strength, these feats might have been more easily 
forgiven; but his irascible temper was imperfectly 
controlled, his anger flared like a resinous torch, he 
was as impatient of folly as if it were not the ap- 
pointed portion of mankind, and he had not a grain 
of meekness in his spiritual constitution. Exaggera- 
tion was foreign to his mind and speech. He was more 
prone to under-statements than to over-statements 
all his life. But he never understood the staying 
power of patience; he never knew that the soul armed 
with this weapon can fight against heavy odds. 

If, as Mr. Robins says, young men — in contra- 
distinction to old ones — were disposed to trust im- 
plicitly in a doctor who shared their sports and 
excelled in them, they did not trust in vain. Dr. 
White repaid their confidence with kindness and wise 
counsel. He understood the spirit of youth because 
it throbbed exultantly in his own veins; but he had 
always a clear insight into values. He knew that, in 
the final analysis, it is character, and character only, 
that counts. Excess was distasteful to him, weakness 
unknown. Mens sana in corpore sano was the creed 
he preached, the rule he lived by. There were gaps 
in his philosophy, and far horizons which he never 



SURGEON AND TROOPER 39 

scanned; but he was a friend of all who faced life 
bravely, and a tonic to the morally debilitated. 

There was but one break for many years in his 
professional life. In November, 1879, he went to 
Europe for the first time, having in his charge his 
uncle, Dr. S. S. White, who had been seriously ill. It 
was a brief and tragic experience. The patient had 
hardly reached France when he grew rapidly worse, 
and died in Paris on December 30. His nephew re- 
turned with the body, and never again crossed the 
Atlantic until after his marriage in 1888. 

As early as 1878 we find Dr. White in consultation 
with the famous Philadelphia surgeon, Dr. D. Hayes 
Agnew, who was to play so important a part in his 
life. Dr. Agnew was then Professor of Surgery in the 
University of Pennsylvania, a man of great ability, 
of quiet wisdom, and of unbounded kindness; mod- 
erate in the acquirement of wealth, generous with 
his time and talents. He had taken for his model 
the great French military surgeon, Jean Dominique, 
Baron Larrey, whom Napoleon pronounced to be 
the best man he had ever known, and whose versa- 
tility equalled his virtues. Larrey was doctor and 
nurse as well as surgeon. He invented the ambu- 
lance volante for transporting wounded soldiers. He 
amputated General Silly's leg on the battle-field 
at Aboukir, under the enemy's fire, then took his 
patient on his back, and carried him safely to the 



40 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

French lines. Dr. Agnew's sympathetic study of this 
remarkable man was nearly as well known as were 
his three volumes on "The Principles and Practice of 
Surgery," a work used as a textbook in the United 
States, Great Britain, and Japan. The years that Dr. 
White served as assistant to Dr. Agnew were of in- 
estimable value to him. In 1882 he was made Demon- 
strator of Surgery; but his connection with the older 
surgeon was never broken until the latter's retire- 
ment from active work in 1889. He figures promi- 
nently in Thomas Eakins's interesting painting of 
Dr. Agnew at his Clinic, which was presented to the 
University on the first of May, 1889, by the under- 
graduate classes of the Medical Department. 

Meanwhile two incidents had occurred which 
brought Dr. White into the limelight of public no- 
tice, earning for him angry abuse, and a fair share of 
ridicule. In March, 1880, while he was on the surgi- 
cal staff of the Philadelphia Hospital, some women 
students who attended his Blockley clinics com- 
plained that he showed distaste for their presence, 
and that he sought to drive them away by unwar- 
ranted freedom of speech. They presented their 
grievance to Mr. James S. Chambers, President of 
the Board of Guardians of the Poor. They also pre- 
sented it to the public through the medium of the 
daily press, greatly to the annoyance of the Dean of 
the Women's Medical College, Dr. Rachel L. Bodley, 



Dr. Agnew at his Clinic: Dr. White Assisting 

From the painting by Thomas Eakins (Copyright) 



SURGEON AND TROOPER 41 

who held stern views on the propriety of silence, 
whose students seldom went to the Blockley clinics, 
and who had never found occasion for complaint. 
Dr. White explained curtly to the Board of Guardians 
that — like Dr. Agnew — he did not wish to have 
women at his clinics, because the nature of the dis- 
eases with which they dealt, and the condition of the 
patients treated at them, made the presence of fe- 
male students undesirable. If, however, they thought 
it well to come (this being their privilege), the only 
course open to him was to conduct his clinics as if 
they were young men. It seemed to him less decent 
to emphasize the presence of women on such occa- 
sions than to ignore it. The Board was at liberty to 
ask for his resignation; but as long as he conducted 
the clinics, he must do so in the way which seemed to 
him most fitting. 

The men students offered an earnest and indignant 
defence of their instructor. Even the poor derelicts 
whom he treated were eager to testify to his con- 
sideration. The Hospital Committee investigated 
the charges, exonerated him completely, and asked 
the Board of Guardians for a vote of confidence, a 
vote which should express absolute satisfaction with 
his performance of his duties. There the matter 
ended. The vindication strengthened Dr. White's 
position, and gave deep satisfaction to his friends. 
They knew that, although no perfected miracle of 



42 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

seemliness, he could no more have offered offence 
to a modest woman than he could have struck a 
child. 

The second episode was of a non-professional char- 
acter, and more far-reaching in its results. Forty 
years ago, duelling was as obsolete in the United 
States as it is to-day. It was, or men thought it 
was, as extinct as the dodo. Yet Dr. White, dis- 
regarding both custom and consequence, fought a 
duel; a bloodless one, it is true, but none the less a 
duel, with pistols, at fifteen paces, after the approved 
fashion of other lands and centuries. His antagonist 
was Robert Adams, Jr., and the simple subject of 
dispute was the proper dress to be worn by a sur- 
geon of the City Troop. Hitherto the gentlemen 
holding this post had been content with a nonde- 
script but obligatory costume, which included white 
trousers and a blue frockcoat. Dr. White asked to be 
permitted to wear the uniform of the Troop. Objec- 
tions were raised by certain troopers, and voiced 
with more force than courtesy by Mr. Adams. A 
quarrel, a blow (given by Dr. White), a challenge 
(sent by Mr. Adams), ensued. The duellists met 
on the Maryland-Delaware border-line, Charles H. 
Townsend acting as second for Dr. White, and 
Alexander Wood for Mr. Adams. Dr. R. William 
Ashbridge accompanied the party as surgeon. Shots 
were exchanged, Dr. White being seen to fire in the 



SURGEON AND TROOPER 43 

air, the principals shook hands, and the five gentle- 
men returned to Philadelphia. 

Such an event could not possibly be held a secret. 
Publicity was inevitable. To say that the newspapers 
snatched their chance would be to faintly express 
their satisfaction over this unusual and exciting 
scandal. Had the Philadelphia press offered a vote of 
thanks to the duellists for affording such priceless 
subject-matter for comment and criticism, it would 
have shown no more than decent gratitude. Instead 
of this, the journals united in a chorus of dispraise. 
They told the plain story over and over again with a 
wealth of varying detail. They printed grave edito- 
rials on the lawlessness of duelling. They demanded 
that the law-breakers should be brought to justice. 
They made merry over the casus belli. They heaped 
ridicule upon the "callow youths" (Dr. White was 
thirty years old), the fretful quarrel, the bloodless 
contest. Even the New York papers dropped their 
languid indifference to quiet Philadelphia, and took 
notice of the two unquiet Philadelphians. The "Her- 
ald" offered the gratuitous fiction that a lady, 
"whose name has been suppressed out of respect 
for the family," occasioned the duel. The "Sun" 
opined that "unearned money and idleness do not 
seem to agree any better with the young men of Phil- 
adelphia than with the young men of New York," — 
a harmless shaft to aim at the self-supporting surgeon, 



44 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

who for ten years had not known or desired a respite 
from hard work. 

Amid all this buzz and hum, Dr. White went his 
usual rounds, gave his lectures, visited his patients, 
and kept his own counsel. His only recorded comment 
(made to a persevering reporter) was to the effect 
that he looked upon duelling " as a relic of a past age, 
with which the present generation has nothing to do"; 
a sensible generalization, but not — under the cir- 
cumstances — enlightening. He let the newspapers 
have their fling, recognizing it as their prerogative; 
but he permitted no personal gibes or criticism, and 
he was not the kind of man whom people lightly 
offended. "The possession of great physical strength 
is no mean assistance to a straightforward life," says 
Augustine Birrell, commenting upon Dr. Johnson. 
When Johnson was insulted by a rapacious book- 
seller, he promptly knocked the fellow down. WTien 
Foote proposed to caricature him on the stage, the 
great "Christian lexicographer" replied that he 
would, in that event, thrash the caricaturist on the 
street, and Foote prudently forbore. If Dr. Johnson 
cherished few rancours, it was largely because he tol- 
erated no liberties. In the same unaccommodating 
spirit, Dr. White refused all his life to suffer any in- 
jurious word or deed. When an irritable pedestrian 
swore at him on the Philadelphia streets, he took the 
trouble (and it involved a great deal of trouble) to 



SURGEON AND TROOPER 45 

get out of his carriage, demand an apology, and — 
not receiving it — knock the offender into the gutter. 
A prompt arrest followed. Dr. White told Magistrate 
Lennon that it was not his habit to permit insulting 
language. The young man who had been bowled 
over explained in his turn that a fracas was the last 
thing he had anticipated or desired. "I had no idea 
he" (Dr. White) "meant to fight," he said simply; 
"and I told him to go to Hell, just as any other 
gentleman would do under the circumstances." 

The breach of law involved in the duel did no 
great harm to Mr. Adams; but there is little doubt 
that Dr. White suffered professionally. Nothing 
could hold back his private practice, which was in- 
creasing rapidly in volume and importance. Nothing 
could shake the confidence which Dr. Agnew and 
other surgeons reposed in his skill. But there was at 
least one institution which would have none of him 
because he had been a duellist. For years the inci- 
dent was remembered against him. For years men 
shook their heads as if they expected him to run 
amuck through society. On the other hand, he 
gained (for as much as it was worth) the point under 
dispute, and more. He received his commission in the 
City Troop, wore his uniform, and, after his faithful 
fashion, remained for years deeply interested in its 
work and welfare. 

There came a day when the duellists — nominally 



46 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

friends after the engagement — sank all shadow of 
animosity, and talked the matter over with good- 
humoured unconcern. "You fired in the air, did n't 
you?" asked Mr. Adams. "Yes, I did," answered 
Dr. White. "I did n't," said Mr. Adams, "I fired at 
you." 

There were those who held that to this fortunate 
circumstance Dr. White owed his life. 



CHAPTER V 

MILESTONES 

THE Chinese have a saying, as true as it is old, 
that if a man is not tall when he is twenty, 
strong when he is thirty, and wise when he is forty, 
he will never be tall, nor strong, nor wise. After 1880, 
Dr. White, having passed his thirtieth year, tall 
enough for any eye, strong enough for any venture, 
began seriously to qualify for wisdom. An able man 
may enjoy the headlong pleasures of youth as simply 
and as avidly as does a fool. His advantage lies in his 
being able to enjoy other things as well. Ambition 
strengthens with the first chilling of high spirits; the 
overpowering interest of successful work weakens 
the love of play; increasing obligations leave little 
time for folly. A great deal has been said about the 
dullness of duty; but the dullness of irresponsibility 
is a more appalling article. It is poor fun to live in 
the tree-tops with Peter Pan, when, down in the city 
streets, men are battling for the worth of life. If Dr. 
White never closed his heart to the memory of old 
days, or to the associates who had lent them gaiety, 
he turned his mind resolutely to the new order of 
purpose and achievement. The annals of the Uni- 
versity show him filling year by year positions of 



48 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

increased responsibility, — Demonstrator of Surgery, 
Lecturer, Assistant Surgeon on the Hospital Staff. 
His profession engrossed his time and interests. He 
worked harder and harder as his will concentrated 
itself upon the tasks of every day. If he kept a 
quarrel or two on hand, it was only for the sake of 
an occasional and needed distraction. 

One gift was his throughout life. He was always 
able to express his convictions and impart his knowl- 
edge in terms which were intelligible to his chosen 
audience. When he spoke to students, he bore in 
mind their intellectual limitations, and made his 
meaning clear as daylight to their not very receptive 
minds. When he gave his emergency lectures at 
Blockley, his language was so simple, his demonstra- 
tions so well chosen and so well executed, that no 
one could fail to understand him. The laity was then 
just beginning to realize the comprehensive nature 
of its ignorance, its inability to give "first aid" to 
the sick and injured. Dr. White's lectures became 
enormously popular, and so fashionable that atten- 
tive newspapers printed lists of names, headed 
"Among those present," as if the sober audience 
which gathered, notebook in hand, had been dancing 
at an Assembly. 

This was the time when the English nurse, Miss 
Alice Fisher, was head of the Blockley training- 
school, and had accomplished many needed reforms. 



MILESTONES 49 

She was a woman who presented the rare combina- 
tion of unusual intelligence, a pleasing address, and 
heroic devotion to a purpose. The daughter of a 
clergyman, the granddaughter of a head-master of 
Eton, she had received admirable instruction in the 
General Hospital, Birmingham. She brought with 
her to this country a young and very handsome as- 
sistant, Miss Edith Horner, who subsequently mar- 
ried Senator Hawley of Connecticut. The two women 
revolutionized the Philadelphia Hospital, which 
could well "thole a mend"; and Dr. White lent them 
his vigorous support. When in 1885 the typhoid epi- 
demic broke out in Plymouth, Pennsylvania, Miss 
Fisher asked for a two months' holiday, which she 
spent organizing a hospital in the stricken town. The 
conditions were appalling, relief came slowly, the 
work to be done was beyond a woman's strength. But 
her courage never failed, her tenacity toughened 
under the weight of difficulties, and willing hands 
carried out her measures as well as the disastrous 
circumstances permitted. How many victims were 
saved by her heroism none will ever know. Her own 
life paid the forfeit. She returned to Philadelphia, 
and took up her old work with her old interest and 
vigour; but never with her old endurance. Her heart, 
which had been weakened by an attack of inflam- 
matory rheumatism fifteen years earlier, was se- 
riously affected by the strain of those two bitter 



50 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

months. She died in June, 1888. Dr. White, who had 
been from the first her friend and ally, was her de- 
voted physician and her executor. Her memory was 
long cherished by the Blockley nurses, who went in 
procession every year to decorate her grave. It will 
never, I trust, be wholly forgotten by the city which 
she served. 

Another remarkable illustration of Dr. White's 
ability to reach his audience was the success which 
attended his emergency lectures to the Philadelphia 
police. The incident which occasioned them was com- 
mon enough in the eighties, and is not altogether 
uncommon to-day. A sick man, thought to be drunk, 
was picked up on the streets, and locked in a station 
cell to die. He did die, no other course being open to 
him; and the evidence offered at the inquest of his 
decent life lent weight to the indignation aroused 
by his lonely and pitiful death. Everybody said the 
police ought to know illness from drunkenness, and 
one man, Dr. White, proposed to teach them the 
difference. His suggestion was gladly adopted by 
Mayor King. The lectures were given in the Police 
Headquarters, in Horticultural Hall, in Association 
Hall, and in the Medical Department of the Uni- 
versity. An alert and attentive audience of from 
seventy to five hundred men attended every one. 
They were told how to treat accident cases, how to 
relieve sunstroke and heat exhaustion, how to use a 



MILESTONES 51 

stretcher, how to recognize symptoms of heart failure 
and apoplexy. No man living could have conveyed 
this information more clearly than did Dr. White, 
or have riveted more closely the attention of his 
hearers. The only danger lay in the excessive zeal of 
the police, who showed a disposition to test their 
freshly acquired proficiency by acting on their own 
initiative in cases which might with propriety have 
been confided to a doctor. 

In December, 1884, a new and eminently sympa- 
thetic field of work was opened to the busy surgeon, 
who hailed it as rapturously as if his days were not 
already full to overflowing. The University of Penn- 
sylvania resolved to found a Department of Physical 
Education, along the lines established by Harvard 
College, and Dr. White was chosen to be its first 
director. Nothing could have been more to his liking. 
Since the days when he had lamented in his high 
school theme that boys had too many lessons and 
too little play, he had never ceased to urge the im- 
portance of athletics. He knew the perils of a seden- 
tary life, and the perils of violent and 'undirected ex- 
ercise. He knew that a royal road to learning is no 
harder to find than a royal road to health. The need 
of a University Gymnasium had been ever present 
in his mind. The position offered him was one of 
dignity and importance. It made him a member of 
the Faculty, it enabled him to advance a cause which 



52 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

he had deeply at heart, and it brought him into new 
contact with the student body. 

For three years he laboured unceasingly, and with- 
out salary, to raise the standard of athletics. He 
offered a cup for competition; he reorganized the 
annual Bowl Fight, making it less of a scrimmage 
and more of a contest; he began to raise money and 
to consider plans for the Gymnasium. In November, 
1886, we find him warmly seconding Dr. Sargent of 
Harvard in a defence of college football. When his 
election to the newly created chair of Genito-Urinary 
Surgery at the University made it sheerly impossible 
for him to continue to hold the directorship of Phys- 
ical Education, he resigned it in 1887, with infinite 
regret, and without any slackening of interest in its 
work. His enthusiasm rose to fever pitch when, in 
the same year, William Byrd Page, son of S. Davis 
Page of Philadelphia, Assistant United States Treas- 
urer, broke his own record, and, incidentally, the 
world's record, by clearing the bar at six feet four 
inches in a running jump on the University Athletic 
Association grounds. That the English athletes, 
Clarke and Ray, should have been present on this 
memorable occasion added to the general satisfac- 
tion. Philadelphia found herself, and was well pleased 
to find herself, "respected like the lave." 

In June, 1888, Dr. White married Letitia, daughter 
of Mr. benjamin H. Brown, and sailed with his bride 



MILESTONES 53 

for England. From this year date the voluminous 
diaries which he never failed to keep of his summer 
wanderings; but, which, alas! always came to an end 
when he returned home, and took up the really 
interesting things of life. All records of travel are 
curiously alike. Mr. Brownell says that, beside Haw- 
thorne's "Note-Books," "Baedeker reads like Gib- 
bon"; and where Hawthorne succumbed, who is 
strong enough to resist? Good letter- writers grow 
monumentally dull when they take a journey, and 
tell us what they have seen, — James Howell being 
the only notable exception to this rule. Dr. White's 
diaries are full of minute detail, because, as in the old 
Hassler days, he could not bear to leave anything 
untold. That he should have had the time and the 
patience to write them is one of the many marvels of 
his life. He travelled hard and fast, he saw every- 
thing that was to be seen; yet if he had his greatcoat 
cleaned, or Mrs. White left her ulster to be shortened, 
he made a leisurely entry of the fact. 

In London he met the famous surgeon, Mr. Treves, 
afterwards Sir Frederick Treves, and laid the foun- 
dation of a singularly happy friendship. He also met 
Sir Joseph Lister, afterwards Lord Lister, for whom 
he entertained the deepest reverence, and with whom 
he spent "the most interesting evening of my life," 
talking antiseptic surgery until midnight. His own 
lectures on antiseptics had crowded the University 



54 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

lecture room during the previous winter, and it was 
with enthusiasm that he listened to the man whose 
power of observation had revolutionized the treat- 
ment of wounds, and saved so many lives. It was 
significant of Dr. White's sane and robust attitude 
to his profession that the saving of life was for him 
the aim and end of surgery. Research, demonstration, 
scientific principles, interested him less than the pa- 
tient he had on hand, and who sometimes betrayed 
a lamentable and unsportsmanlike disposition to die. 
"II faut beaucoup pardonner a la nature," said Fagon, 
the famous physician of Louis the Fourteenth. Dr. 
WThite forgave nothing. He entertained a deep and 
well-warranted suspicion that what nature is after 
is to kill, and he fought this purpose with all the 
energy of his soul. Being asked once if the skill of a 
surgeon lay in his knowledge of anatomy, in the sure- 
ness of his diagnosis, or in the delicacy of his touch, 
he said simply that, to his mind, the skill of a sur- 
geon lay in his ability to keep his patient alive after 
an operation. Otherwise, cui bono ? 

It was perhaps inevitable that, in this first foreign 
summer, Dr. White should have behaved as if nothing 
in Europe was going to last another year. Not sat- 
isfied with Paris hospitals, and German rivers, and 
Swiss glaciers, and Flemish pictures, the dauntless 
pair went buoyantly to Italy in August, and have 
left it on record that, on the fifteenth of that in- 



MILESTONES 55 

auspicious month, they saw Pompeii and climbed 
Vesuvius. Pompeii and Vesuvius on one day, and 
that day the 15th of August! "Few women could 
have accomplished it," writes the diarist proudly; 
and, of a certainty, not many would have tried. 
" For five successive summers the programme of Eu- 
ropean travel was repeated, but never at the same 
impetuous speed, and never with the same heavy 
sense of responsibility. By the following June the 
doctor had grown so lax that he could write in his 
diary, "It is hardly worth while to attempt a de- 
scription of the Elgin marbles." Twelve months be- 
fore he would not have turned idly from this task. 
He can also accuse his friend and companion, Hart- 
man Kuhn, of making up his diary with an open 
Baedeker for inspiration. Baedekers and tourist 
diaries are as inseparable as the Siamese twins. The 
correctness with which Dr. White packs the conso- 
nants into the names of his Welsh villages proves the 
benign presence of a guide-book. 

The summer of 1890 contained three memorable 
experiences. A lazy little trip with Treves and his 
family in a house-boat on the Broads, a tour of the 
Berlin hospitals in company with Sir Joseph Lis- 
ter, and a visit to Count Pappenheim (who had 
married Miss Mary Wheeler of Philadelphia) in his 
Bavarian home. The first occurrence was the most 
enjoyable. The carefully planned idleness of an Eng- 



56 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

lish holiday was a revelation to the busy American 
tourists. The boat, like the famous Mississippi 
steamer, was warranted to float "wherever the 
ground was a little damp." Its occupants were con- 
genial companions. "I consider it great good luck," 
notes the doctor in his diary, "that Treves should 
turn out to be the sort of fellow he is; as fond of 
bathing and swimming as I am" (which meant that 
he was semi-amphibious), "and ready for any kind 
of fun." The Bavarian visit involved meeting a great 
many Germans, new in type, and therefore pro- 
foundly interesting to Dr. White, who, all his life, 
approached men of every rank and condition with 
mental ease. It was this distinguishing characteristic, 
coupled with the tenacity of his friendships, which 
made human intercourse so sweet. 

As for the Berlin hospitals, the diary must speak 
for itself. There are several entries, but one will suf- 
fice. The doctor went with Lister to see Dr. Von 
Bergmann, who had the most important surgical 
practice in the Empire, demonstrate in the Royal 
Clinic his method of dressing wounds. A number of 
women, whose breasts had been excised for cancer, 
were shown to the students. "The scars were ugly, 
pigmented, irregular and irritable," writes the Amer- 
ican surgeon. "The dressings stank. Pus ran out of 
the wounds. I have helped Agnew with hundreds of 
these cases, and have operated on dozens of them, 



MILESTONES 57 

and I can truthfully say that we have never had 
such wretched results. Other cases brought in were 
not much better, and I left the Clinic, disgusted with 
this first glimpse of German surgery. Lister shared 
my view, and expressed himself strongly to me on 
the subject." 

In the summer of 1891, Dr. and Mrs. White went 
with Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Harrison on their yacht, 
Speranza, to Norway and the North Cape, to Stock- 
holm and to Russia. It was a life of comparative 
leisure (save for a breathless rush to Moscow), and 
of superlative luxury. Eating and drinking play a 
heavy part in the yachtman's monotonous existence 
(there were days when the bill of fare was apparently 
the only thing to be noted); and one wonders if, in 
this welter of menus, the doctor ever recalled the 
long, long week of pork and beans and hard work on 
the heaving decks of the Hassler. He plunged deeply 
into Russian history by way of preparing for St. 
Petersburg, and was a bit dumbfounded by this first 
introduction to the annals of the Romanoffs. "The 
only thing I know to compare with it in the way of 
family history," he writes, "is one of those that we 
made in our reports at the Eastern Penitentiary, to 
show how criminality may be inherited. " 

It was at the close of this varied tour that a new 
light broke upon Dr. White's mind, a new resolve 
entered his soul. Europe attracted him as powerfully 



58 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

as ever, but Europe did not necessarily imply per- 
petual motion. If Treves could stay in one place 
(and that place usually remote from civilization), 
and be happy, why should not he? The English sur- 
geon's simple conception of surroundings was like 
that of Thomas a Kempis: "What canst thou see 
elsewhere that thou dost not see here? Behold the 
heavens, and the earth, and all the elements; for out 
of these are all things made." The American surgeon, 
town-bred, and with the restlessness of his race, 
could never attain that serene hold upon nature, 
that closeness to mother earth, which gives the 
Briton, as it gave Antaeus, his mighty staying-power. 
But he was well equipped for an ordinary outdoor 
life. A strong swimmer, a tireless walker, an admir- 
able horseman, a devoted cyclist, a persevering fish- 
erman, he could always make sure of occupation and 
fatigue. In every one of these fields Mrs. WThite 
played her heroic part, — vaulting ambition making 
up for any lack of physical endurance. A determi- 
nation to "travel less and rest more" is recorded in 
the diary, and it bore fruit in two successive English 
holidays, one spent in West Lulworth, and one in the 
Scillies, and both filled to the brim with the simple 
happenings common to English country life. 

Now and then a very uncommon happening va- 
ried the pleasant monotony. A little Lulworth girl, 
twelve years old, the daughter of Captain Lecky of 



MILESTONES 59 

the coast guard, slipped over a cliff three hundred 
and eighty feet high, falling on a rough pebbly shore, 
and sustaining no other injury than a broken ankle. 
The two surgeons attended the child who was so hard 
to kill, and vouched for her recovery. Sometimes the 
exigencies of British decorum bore heavily on the 
roving American. Dr. White was not wont to go to 
church, and his laxness in this regard startled Mr. 
Treves's little daughters, who had attached them- 
selves ardently to their father's friend. For weeks 
they asked no questions, and then curiosity and 
desire got the better of politeness. "Why don't you 
ever come to church with us?" said the younger and 
bolder child. "Because, my dear," was the sober 
answer, "I promised my mother that I never would." 
The summer of 1894 stands out from the rolling 
years because it was actually spent "at home," — if 
a hunter's camp in the Rockies can be so described. 
Lured by the seductive narratives of Dr. Charles B. 
Penrose, and dazzled by his exploits, Dr. and Mrs. 
White forswore civilization for three months, and 
fled to the wilderness with a train of five saddle- 
horses, eleven pack-horses, two admirable guides, 
and a bad cook. Their first camp was pitched by 
Hell Roaring Creek, whose headlong falls were not 
then coveted by contending industries; their second, 
on Snake River above Jackson's Lake. A tepee or 
Indian lodge, fifteen feet in diameter and fifteen 



60 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

feet high, with three feet of door and a hole to let 
out the smoke, made them a dry and comfortable 
habitation. A cooking tent, a dining tent, and sleep- 
ing tents for the men completed their quarters. Their 
principal avocations were fishing for reluctant trout 
(even the hungry and credulous lake trout scorned 
their advances), and pursuing the trail of deer and 
elk which seldom or never materialized. In the happy 
absence of letters and newspapers, they were able to 
concentrate their attention upon matters at hand, 
upon those few and bleak essentials which are alike 
for the savage and the civilized man. 

The abundant entries in the diary (there was time 
and to spare for writing) reveal, not so much enjoy- 
ment, as a heroic determination to enjoy. Dr. White 
loved the long rough rides, the exhilarating altitude, 
— seven thousand feet above the sea, — the splen- 
dour of his surroundings. For a happy man, he was 
always singularly sensitive to natural scenery, which, 
to many of us, is a solace reserved for old age and 
disappointments. He was content with the whole- 
some simplicities of a hunter's life, — bread and ba- 
con and cheese for a noonday meal, elk steaks and 
onions at night. When the butter grew strong enough 
to "walk alone," he contentedly resigned this be- 
loved article of diet. He began by bathing gingerly 
and by sections in the ice-cold mountain streams, 
and he ended, like a good mountaineer, by narrowing 



MILESTONES 61 

the sections until they reached "the nearest thing to 
nothing." He slept soundly in his warm bag, and 
he endured, though not with equanimity, the on- 
slaughts of mosquitoes. He let his beard grow, "the 
ugliest thing of its age ever seen," and he looked — 
to the dispassionate eyes of his wife — "like a cross 
between Bill Sikes and the Wandering Jew." 

But he had a not unreasonable conviction that 
the compensation of a hunter's life is hunting; and 
the scarcity of game, combined with his own in- 
expertness, caused him many disappointments. He 
records proudly, but soberly, that Mrs. White sur- 
passed him as a rifle shot; and, indeed, she brought 
down her first bull elk fifteen days, and her second 
eight days, before he shot his one and only — but 
very handsome — specimen. Her amazing pluck, 
energy, and fortitude enabled her to bear endless 
fatigue and exposure. When they changed camps, 
she rode twelve hours, climbing rough trails, wading 
deep fords, and coming in at nightfall "quite chip- 
per." When I add that she learned to cook their 
simple fare — Dr. White "couldn't boil a quart of 
water without burning it" — and to wash their 
scanty outfit, it must be admitted that she was the 
better backwoodsman of the two. 

In the Penrose camp, all was different. Dr. Penrose 
was an old hand at the sport. The game, which so 
gleefully eluded Dr. White, fell easy victims to his 



62 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

practised hand. The fish, when he cast his fly, recog- 
nized their appointed destiny, and rose briskly to 
fulfil it. Moreover, he could cook, and dearly loved 
this noble and civilizing art. He permitted Mrs. 
Penrose to make the coffee, and one of the guides 
to bake the bread and biscuits; but "soups, meats 
and fancy dishes" he took under his own care. His 
chowders and stews were so savoury that his hungry 
friends offered him five dollars a day to come over to 
their camp and cook. The mere sight of him flour- 
ishing ladles and basting-forks, and wiping these in- 
struments on his buckskin breeches, filled the on- 
lookers with admiration and with appetite. "If we 
should run out of provisions before the end of the 
summer," comments Dr. White musingly, "those 
buckskins would make rich nutritious soup which 
would keep us all alive for a week." 

To the Penrose camp came hunters and trappers, 
friends of other seasons, who told strange tales of 
their rude, adventurous lives. The one who most 
deeply interested the Whites was an Englishman, 
Richard Lee, known as "Beaver Dick," who had 
been brought to this country a child of eight, and 
reared in the woods like a young savage. He had 
married two Indian wives, and he told his sympa- 
thetic listeners how he and his first wife and six 
children had unwittingly moved into a cabin where 
there had been a case of smallpox; in consequence 



MILESTONES 63 

of which mishap he had, as he feelingly expressed it, 
"lost the whole damn outfit in a week." His second 
wife, "Suse," was a capable treasure of a woman, a 
true helpmate, with all the useful arts of savagery 
and civilization at her finger-ends. 

On the whole, the camping summer was a satis- 
factory one, — an interesting thing to have done. 
Dr. White never regretted the experience, and never 
repeated it. 



CHAPTER VI 
THE YEARS THAT COUNT 

WHILE the summers sped smoothly by, the 
winters in Philadelphia were rough, tumul- 
tuous, and triumphant. In February, 1889, Dr. White 
was elected to the chair of Clinical Surgery in the 
University of Pennsylvania. His eminence in his 
profession was undisputed, and it was with the voice 
of authority that he upheld two great and sorely 
needed reforms, — the Medical Examiners' Bill, and 
the four years' course for medical students. The bill, 
which aimed at protecting the public from ignorant 
practitioners, was warmly supported by Dr. Agnew 
and Dr. Pepper. It is amazing to reflect upon the 
indifference of the general public thirty years ago as 
to the fitness of the young men turned out from 
cheap schools, and permitted to practise upon the 
public. Sir Walter Scott once found a Scottish black- 
smith parading as a doctor in an English village. 
When he remonstrated with the man upon his in- 
iquitous conduct, and asked him if he did not some- 
times kill his patients, the loyal Caledonian answered 
composedly: "Oh, aye, maybe sae. Whiles they die, 
and whiles no; but it's the will o' Providence. Ony 
how, your Honour, it wad be lang before it makes 



THE YEARS THAT COUNT 65 

up for Flodden." In much the same spirit, a host of 
stalwart young blunderers gave to an American pub- 
lic the benefit of their comprehensive ignorance. 

There was no great difficulty in pushing the bill 
through the state legislature; but what Agnew and 
Pepper and White had never anticipated was the claim 
made by Homceopathists and Eclectics to an equal 
representation on the board. There were then in 
Pennsylvania about seven thousand allopathic, seven 
hundred homoeopathic, and three hundred eclectic 
physicians. An amendment to the bill provided that 
the Governor should not appoint on the board of 
examiners a majority of any one school. It was car- 
ried, — some shadowy notion of fair play to the 
under dog influencing our kind-hearted lawgivers. 
The consequence was that the irregulars had a work- 
ing majority over the regulars, who naturally did 
not like it. Those were days when the rival schools 
"fought bitter and regular like man and wife." 
There was no pretence of accommodation on one 
side, or smiling indifference on the other. 

As for the four years' course of study, the argu- 
ments against it were all purely and frankly senti- 
mental. Such legislature, it was urged, was aimed at 
the poor boy who could not afford to spend four years 
in a medical school. It favoured the rich man's son 
to whom time and money meant nothing. It was un- 
fair and tyrannous to students in needy circum- 



66 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

stances. No one, it will be observed, wasted a thought 
upon the patients (poor enough often) whom these 
half-trained young men were going to assist to their 
graves. Dr. Roberts Bartholow of Jefferson College 
was of the opinion that a two years' course would 
be quite long enough, because, as he naively said, 
a student's real education came after he had grad- 
uated. In other words, he would be taught by his 
failures, — a consoling reflection. Dr. James E. 
Garretson of the Medico-Chirurgical Hospital de- 
nounced all measures of reform. He did not want a 
board of examiners. He did not want a four years' 
course of study. He wanted things to be just as they 
had always been. On the other hand, Dr. J. W. 
Holland, Dean of Jefferson, and Dr. Clara Marshall, 
Dean of the Woman's Medical College, emphatically 
supported the four years' course. It may be observed 
that England at this time required four years of 
study, and France, five; while, in the United States, 
Kentucky had a medical school which graduated a 
student in nine months; and Tennessee and Georgia 
were little more exacting. It was high time that 
American physicians took a stand against such per- 
ilous inefficiency. Dr. White, who held his profession 
in honour, and who heartily mistrusted the line of 
least resistance, worked unceasingly for a higher 
level of attainment. Six years later, we find him writ- 
ing to the "University Courier" a spirited defence 



THE YEARS THAT COUNT 67 

of the new entrance examinations demanded by the 
Medical Department of the University, — examina- 
tions which were thought by many to be needlessly 
severe. "If there should arise," he said, "as a result 
of this advancement in entrance requirements, any 
necessity for a choice between a class of four or five 
hundred men, well prepared for the work of their 
lives, and a class of eight or nine hundred of infe- 
rior scientific attainments, I am confident that the 
Faculty would unhesitatingly accept the former al- 
ternative, and would be upheld in that position by 
the Trustees, with whom the final decision must 
rest." 

The same winter which witnessed Dr. White's 
advancement in the University saw him waging a 
brave but losing battle for his position as chief of the 
surgical staff of the Philadelphia Hospital. It is a 
curious story of political intrigue and personal ani- 
mosity. Dr. James W. White, Senior, had served for 
years as president of the Board of Charities and Cor- 
rection. From this thankless and onerous post he 
was summarily dismissed, "without executive com- 
ment," by Mayor Fitler, who ruled the city pater- 
nally, and was averse to giving reasons for his acts. 
An angry correspondence ensued. The Mayor, en- 
trenched in authority, and outraged by the comments 
of Dr. J. William White, Junior, promptly demanded 
his resignation from the staff of the Philadelphia 



68 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

Hospital. With equal promptness and superior 
vigour, Dr. White refused to resign; whereupon the 
Mayor called upon the directors of the Board of 
Charities and Correction to dismiss the recalcitrant 
surgeon. A fearful fracas followed. The press con- 
demned municipal despotism, and printed cartoons 
of Fitler in crown and ermine robes. The University 
students and the students who attended the Phila- 
delphia Hospital clinics made noisy demonstrations 
in favour of their instructor. But the directors, or at 
least three out of the five, did as they were bidden. 
Dr. Richard A. Cleeman supported Dr. WTiite. Mr. 
Richard McMurtrie refused to vote. Five other Uni- 
versity physicians were retired at the same time, and 
their places filled by men from Jefferson College and 
the Medico-Chirurgical. Dr. H. R. Wharton, who 
was elected to fill Dr. White's position, flatly refused 
to accept it. Four years later, Dr. White was rein- 
stated in his post amid clamorous rejoicings, and he 
held it until 1898, when his ever increasing duties at 
the University compelled him to reluctantly resign. 

In April, 1890, Dr. White contributed to the " Med- 
ical News" an article recommending the electric 
chair in place of the gallows. It is a strong argument, 
and, what is more, a readable paper, showing that 
curious literary twist which he was wont to give to 
subjects seemingly remote from literature. It also 
reveals a relentless common sense, sharply at va- 



THE YEARS THAT COUNT 69 

riance with the sentimentality then beginning to dom- 
inate a restless, anxious, and humane public. He ad- 
vocates electricity because it is less terrifying and 
painful to the criminal. But he advocates it still more 
urgently because the brutality of hanging, and its 
sinister associations, influence juries to acquit, and 
governors to pardon. "Punishment," he says truly, 
"is a deterrent influence in proportion to its certainty, 
not its severity." His association with the Peniten- 
tiary had given him an insight into that direful thing, 
the criminal mind, and had convinced him that the 
most powerful influence to control it is a reasonable 
fear of the law, and of the consequences of breaking 
the law. He agrees with Dr. Holmes's verdict: "Noth- 
ing stands in the way of the selfish motive which 
leads to crime except some stronger selfish motive." 
He quotes with relish a passage from an intercepted 
letter written by a convict in Australia (where a 
murderous assault upon a warden was at that time a 
capital offence) to a fellow cracksman at home." They 
top" (hang) "a cove out here for slogging a bloke. 
That bit of rope, dear Jack, is a great check on a 
man's temper." 1 

In November, 1890, the first importation of Dr. 
Robert Koch's famous "lymph" reached Philadel- 
phia. The press and public were greatly agitated 

1 The Punishment and Prevention of Crime. By Colonel Sir Edmund 
Du Cane, Inspector of Prisons in Great Britain. 



70 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

over its arrival; the physicians, cautious and reserved. 
The five members of the Philadelphia Tuberculosis 
Commission, to whom was entrusted the handling of 
the new remedy, were Dr. William Pepper, Dr. James 
Tyson, Dr. John Musser, Dr. White, and Dr. John 
Guiteras, who had gone over to Germany to study 
its use, and was still in Berlin. There was a painful 
rush to the hospitals of patients eager for the magic 
cure, yet so unreasonably alarmed that, after the 
first injection, many refused a second, and many 
more a third. Eight cases were selected for treatment 
at the University Hospital, those of lupus being as- 
signed to Dr. White. Reporters, who had hitherto 
been restricted to glimpses of the little tubes filled 
with reddish-brown liquid, were admitted to the 
operating-room; and one of them, true to his training, 
described with accuracy and animation the rings on 
the fingers of a female patient. The lymph brought 
nothing but disappointment to the sick, and to the 
less sanguine physicians. Confidence waned steadily 
until its flickering gleams died in a dead level of 
despondency. There are few things sadder than the 
long story of "cures" for the incurables. Hope dies 
so hard, and human beings so easily. 

In the spring of 1891, Dr. William Pepper's gen- 
erous gift of fifty thousand dollars to the permanent 
endowment fund of the Medical Department of the 
University, and the ready assistance proffered by 



THE YEARS THAT COUNT 71 

Dr. Agnew, Dr. White, Dr. William Goodell, and Dr. 
H. C. Wood, relieved the school from financial strain, 
raised its standard, and insured the four years' 
course, so essential to its dignity and usefulness. 
The following March, Dr. Agnew died, full of years 
and honours, leaving behind him a name cherished 
by friends, and reverenced by his profession. A year 
later Dr. White was elected patron of the D. Hayes 
Agnew Surgical Society. It was a responsibility he 
did not covet, and an honour he could not refuse. He 
was formally installed at the annual dinner of the 
society in the Bellevue-Stratf ord, and the enthusiasm 
which greeted him expressed alike the pride the city 
took in his achievements, and the warm affection of 
his friends. His speech on this occasion, as on all other 
occasions, had that ring of candour, of straight and 
strong sincerity, which never failed to reach his 
hearers' hearts. He summed up the experience of 
forty-three years when he said, "I have been reason- 
ably successful in life; but I have always felt in my 
own case the truth of Dr. Franklin's words, that, if 
men are honest, they will admit that their success is 
more of a marvel to themselves than it can ever be 
to others." 

An instance of undoubted success, which surprised 
no one, was the reception accorded to "The Ameri- 
can Text-Book of Surgery," edited by Dr. W. W. 
Keen and Dr. White, and published in 1893. It was 



72 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

immediately adopted by forty-nine medical schools 
and colleges, including the Kansas City Homoeo- 
pathic Medical College, which knew a good thing 
when it saw one. Australia welcomed the book warmly, 
and its steady sales compelled its editors to issue, three 
years later, a new and revised edition. 

In the summer of 1895, Dr. and Mrs. White went 
to Spain and southern France. On the voyage to 
Gibraltar they encountered Mr. John Sargent, the 
artist; and an acquaintance begun over a game of 
chess, the "glad conquest" of a summer hour, rip- 
ened into a warm and lifelong friendship. Together 
they travelled to Tangiers and to Granada, where 
Sargent lingered while the more impetuous tourists 
speeded on their way. He had come to Spain to make 
studies of the Spanish Madonnas; and although no 
word of his could open Dr. WTiite's eyes and heart to 
the beauty of Murillo (a love for whom is one of life's 
benefactions), and although no argument of the doc- 
tor's could arouse in the artist's soul a true eager- 
ness for athletics, the two men had, nevertheless, a 
hearty enjoyment of each other's companionship. It 
is amusing to note that when, in 1898, Dr. White's 
enthusiasm for cycling had reached its height, he 
actually bullied Sargent into buying a new wheel, 
declaring, on the authority of a surgeon, that his 
friend was "soft and in need of exercise." The follow- 
ing summer, golf was his ruling passion; and the poor 



THE YEARS THAT COUNT 73 

artist, having come trustfully to visit him at Barton 
Court, was sent at once around the links with Mrs. 
White as an instructor. "It would be a good thing 
for him if he should come to like it," writes the doctor 
with enchanting seriousness in his diary. 

It was in the spring of this year, 1899, that the 
report of Mr. Sargent's death in London had reached 
the United States, and, before there was time to con- 
tradict it, the American newspapers snatched their 
chance to print long-cherished portraits, and ex- 
haustive notices of his work. Fatigue in connection 
with the Royal Academy Hanging Committee was 
given as the somewhat inadequate cause of death. 
"Expired after a brief illness at the house of his son," 
was the headline to which the great artist took, as 
an unmarried man, especial exception. "Had I died 
anywhere," he said virtuously, "it would not have 
been in the house of a son." 

Dr. White's friendship with Mr. Edwin Abbey was 
as warm and as constant as his friendship with Mr. 
Sargent. He never went to England without paying 
a brief visit to Morgan Hall at Fairf ord, where Abbey 
had built a studio "as big as a barn," and where in 
1897 he was hard at work on the "Holy Grail" dec- 
orations for the Boston Library. These crowded and 
glowing canvases, Dr. White pronounces to be 
"simply magnificent"; and there is little doubt that 
in the artist's vast and empty studio they had the 



74 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

space they need, and did not appear to be pushing 
the public out of the room, as they do in their nar- 
rower confines. 

The inextinguishable passion for athletics coloured 
Dr. White's life, affording him the pleasures of his 
youth, the enthusiasms of his middle age, and the 
adamantine convictions which lasted until his death. 
The summer of 1896 was spent in New England, and 
he had the supreme satisfaction of witnessing the 
Newport swimming feats of Mr. Peter McNally, Mr. 
Charles Oelrichs, and Mr. Robert Ralston. They 
interested him all the more deeply because, sixteen 
years earlier, he himself had covered the course now 
mapped out for one of the younger athletes. In Sep- 
tember, 1880, he swam from the Spring Wharf, New- 
port, across the harbour, past Fort Adams Wharf, and 
south of Beaver Tail to the head of Narragansett 
Pier Beach. The distance was nine miles, the day 
chill and windy, the time four hours and fifty min- 
utes. Twice during the swim, a raw egg and a dash of 
sherry was handed out to him from the accompany- 
ing boat. Even at forty-six, though he could no longer 
repeat the triumphs of his youth, he took part in 
a genial game devised by Mr. Oelrichs, and called 
"Angling for Men." The swimmer was attached to 
a stout line which did not interfere with his motions. 
If he were hauled by the anglers into the boat, he 
lost his game. If he successfully resisted them, he 



THE YEARS THAT COUNT 75 

won. Mr. Belmont, Mr. Theodore Havemeyer, and 
Mr. James Kernochan angled thirty-eight minutes 
for Dr. White, while the gray-haired and distin- 
guished surgeon plunged, gambolled, and strained 
in the heaving waters. He was dragged to within a 
hundred feet of the anchored boat, but not close 
enough to be landed. It was an engaging sport. 

To a man so deeply concerned with every form of 
exercise, the college football games were necessarily 
matters of vital interest. As surgeon for the Pennsyl- 
vania team, Dr. White stood responsible for the 
men's physical condition; as a most loyal son of the 
University, their victories filled him with elation, 
their defeats with gloom. The controversy over pre- 
liminary training raged hotly in the autumn of 1896. 
The Pennsylvania men were taken in the summer to 
Long Island for three weeks' practice. Harvard, Yale, 
and Princeton had abandoned this system, though 
their teams met occasionally in the holidays to "try 
out." Mr. Caspar Whitney, writing in "Harper's 
Weekly," attacked the summer training as savour- 
ing unduly of professionalism. Mr. Henry Geyelin, 
Mr. John Bell, Mr. George Wharton Pepper, and 
Dr. White defended it vigorously, not only because 
it put the men in good shape, but because it saved 
time and fatigue when they were back in college. A 
vast deal of comment, not unmixed with acrimony, 
was expended on this dispute. Those were care-free 



76 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

days. We look back on them now very much as 
Pandora might, in her old age, have looked back 
upon the smiling, frolicsome years when the box-lid 
was shut down, and no troubles had been let loose 
upon the world. 

As for the safety-loving people, the pacifists of that 
time, who condemned football in toto as a brutal and 
dangerous game, Dr. White entertained for them a 
sincere and outspoken contempt. Their point of view 
was alien to his spirit. He knew that in England, 
as well as in the United States, there were men and 
women who held these unworthy opinions; and he 
was much comforted by a letter from Treves, de- 
fending football, not only as one of the best and 
bravest, but as one of the safest of sports. "More 
lads die from loafing in a public house on Saturday 
afternoons," wrote the British surgeon, "than ever 
die from playing football one afternoon in the week. 
I played every Saturday during the season until I 
was twenty-one. I was a member of the Hospital 
team, and we played in only first-class matches. I 
can recollect in all this time only two cases of con- 
cussion, two broken legs, and some broken ribs. As 
for myself, I broke two metacarpal bones, and that 
was all. Put these broken bones on the debit side, and 
then try to estimate what must be written on the 
credit side. To drive through the streets in a hansom 
cab is more dangerous than to play football matches." 



THE YEARS THAT COUNT 77 

There are readers to whom Treves's list of casual- 
ties suggests the philosophic attitude of a country- 
woman who was asked if she did not find an unpro- 
tected well-curb a bit dangerous for her large family 
of children. "Well, no," she said thoughtfully, "not 
so bad as you might think. We've lived here nigh on 
to seven years, and have lost only two of 'em." 

But, after all, to inquire too curiously into dangers, 
to count too closely the cost of all we do, is a dis- 
quieting and a withering process. We lose a great 
deal, and — such is the irony of fate — we are not 
sure of saving anything. There is a satisfactory little 
poem of Bret Harte's, in which the man who dares 
not hunt lest he be hurt, and who dares not sail lest 
he be drowned, stays at home, and is swallowed up 
in an earthquake. Dr. White's simple and brave 
philosophy was proof against every form of panic. 
He gave it voice at the reception offered by the Mask 
and Wig Club to the Pennsylvania football team, in 
November, 1898. It had been a hard season, and the 
Thanksgiving game which closed it had been played 
— and well played — in the teeth of a furious storm. 
I quote a portion of Dr. White's speech on this occa- 
sion, because it expresses with animation and sin- 
cerity his lifelong point of view : * 

"Last Thursday gave apparent support to those 
who object to football on account of the exposure it 
involves; and the game, from that standpoint, will 



78 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

probably never have a more severe test. This is the 
only time I have seen it played under such circum- 
stances, and it is unlikely that it will be so played 
again. I therefore regard Thursday as a supreme test 
of the sincerity of my own convictions, and I have 
thought much and seriously on the matter since then. 
During the whole game a driving gale was blowing 
from the northwest, carrying with it rain and snow. 
The field was a quagmire of ice-cold mud and snow, 
with pools of icy water on the surface. In five min- 
utes every man was soaked to the skin, and his 
clothes weighed many pounds more than when he 
put them on. The first half lasted for more than an 
hour, and the work was hard and exhausting. We 
must also take into account the dispiriting influence 
of an adverse score. 

"The newspapers have not exaggerated the ap- 
parently appalling condition of the men at the end 
of this half. Many of them were shaking so that they 
could not give the least aid toward getting off their 
wet clothes; could not carry their hands to their 
mouths with the hot soup which was given them; 
could not talk intelligibly for the chattering of their 
teeth; could scarcely feel the vigorous chafing of their 
hands and feet. 

"I should be opposed to subjecting them again to 
such suffering (it went far beyond discomfort). I 
should be opposed to risk losing a game by the toss 



THE YEARS THAT COUNT 79 

of a coin, when well-earned victory means so much 
to all Pennsylvanians. I thought for a few moments 
that, as football players, the team was done for that 
day. But I never for a moment, after looking them 
over, felt anxiety as to the ultimate effect upon their 
health. We know that men in such condition, with 
their vitality so strong and their power of resistance 
at so high a level, repel, not only cold and fatigue, 
which are of minor importance, but those forms of 
infection which, favoured by cold and fatigue, are 
potent, in the presence of low vitality and dimin- 
ished resistant power, to produce fever, pneumonia, 
grippe, and other diseases. 

"The reasons for my unshaken confidence in Penn- 
sylvania spirit and pluck are obvious. I have many 
times admired the men who represent us on the foot- 
ball field; but never so deeply as on last Thursday, 
when those eleven frozen, purple, shivering, chatter- 
ing players, after a brief ten minutes spent in trying to 
get warm, went out again into that storm, overcame 
an adverse score, and wrested victory from the hands 
of worthy and formidable opponents. They deserve to 
be honoured, not only by every Pennsylvanian, but 
by every one who loves manliness and courage." 

It is little wonder that this kind of eloquence, 
simple, sincere, plain-spoken, found its way to the 
student's heart. It is little wonder that "Doctor 
Bill" is still a name to conjure by. No one who has 



80 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

heard the victorious team stand cheering on an au- 
tumn night before the surgeon's door, no one who 
has listened to the long-drawn cry — 

Ra, ra, ra, 

Penn-syl-va-ni-a, 
White! White! White! — 

can doubt the place he held. 

Two months after this memorable Thanksgiving 
game, Dr. White went to Boston to address the New 
England Alumni Society of the University of Penn- 
sylvania. On this occasion he delivered a glowing 
eulogy upon Benjamin Franklin, — as an athlete. 
With a hardihood of imagination which we cannot 
sufficiently admire, he pictured "Poor Richard" as 
contemplating with especial gratification the foot- 
ball games. "The man who prided himself in his 
youth on his swimming, and on his ability to carry 
a printer's 'form' in each hand, while his fellow 
workmen could carry but one, the man who made 
athletic sports an integral part of his proposed cur- 
riculum for the Academy, would not only rejoice to 
have 'Franklin Field' named after him, but would 
join with us in our enthusiasm over the victories 
won on that and other fields by the representatives 
of Pennsylvania." 

This is an original point of view. Franklin was so 
many things, — statesman, scientist, philosopher, 
and economist, that his athletic side has been ob- 



THE YEARS THAT COUNT 81 

scured by time. It is hard to fancy him cheering, 
whooping, and waving his respectable hat as the 
Quakers rush to goal. 

And swimming? What did Franklin know of that 
noble art as practised by a modern enthusiast? Many 
of Dr. White's summer diaries read like the records 
of a merman. If he were within reach of the sea, he 
spent more time in it than out of it. There is some- 
thing so monotonous in these perpetual immersions, 
that no terrestrial reader can fail to enjoy his lament- 
able experiences in Holland. Thither he went with 
Treves in August, 1898, confidently hoping that in 
this level and sea-girt land they could cycle and 
bathe, cycle and bathe, cycle and bathe, through the 
long, hot, happy days. Save in the matter of heat, 
they found themselves mistaken. The tideless and 
filthy waters of the Zuyder Zee repelled even their 
ardour. At Zandvoort they joyfully essayed the lap- 
ping waters of the North Sea, and were so badly 
stung by jelly fish that the two surgeons were ill for 
several days. Mrs. White escaped more lightly. Fi- 
nally at Scheveningen, where the wide, hospitable surf 
invited their advances, they found, first, that after 
4 p.m. no one was permitted to bathe at all; second, 
that an hour's wait for a bathing-house was the pre- 
liminary of every dip; and third, that when they 
ventured out to their arm-pits in a smooth sea, a 
"life-guard" shouted and blew his horn to bring 



82 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

them back to land. If they did not at once return, 
he waded out and "rescued" them. It was a humil- 
iating experience for a man who had swum from 
Newport to Narragansett Beach to have a Dutch 
official, decorated with a life-saving medal, play the 
Newfoundland dog trick with him in safe and quiet 
waters. Dr. White's language on this occasion was 
so vitriolic that Treves urged him to publish an 
"English and Gehennese Phrase-Book," which should 
meet all such emergencies, and help the inarticulate 
tourist on his way. It was to begin with familiar 
colloquialisms, such as "What the Hell," "How the 
Hell," " Where the Hell," " Who the Hell," "Why the 
Hell," and after translating these into divers tongues, 
was to advance by degrees to more fervid and com- 
plicated utterances. 

Perhaps it may be well to say here that swear- 
ing was never for Dr. White "the riotous medium of 
the under-languaged." His vocabulary was large, his 
speech was trenchant. He was well aware that the 
value of an oath lies in its timeliness and its rarity. 
Repeated too often, it sinks into mere drivel, and the 
most tiresome form of drivel. If, as we are told, "the 
inspired pen of John Masefield has made lyric poetry 
blossom with both wild and cultivated profanity," 
these flowers of speech owe their vigour and their 
colour to a process of selection. Mr. Masefield, al- 
though his diction, like his versification, is ungirt, 



THE YEARS THAT COUNT 83 

has never permitted himself to run amuck through 
blasphemy. The quickness of Dr. White's temper 
and his habitual impatience inclined him to strong 
language. His love for every form of outdoor exercise 
insured for him a constant variety of provocation. 
Take golf alone, which Mr. William Lyon Phelps 
says is, next to the telephone, the greatest incentive 
to swearing. "The disappointments of golf are so 
immediate, so unexpected, so overwhelming. They 
make taciturn gentlemen as efficient as teamsters." 
Now Dr. White began to play golf when he was in 
his fiftieth year; and while this game is Heaven's gift 
to the middle-aged and the elderly, they seldom excel 
in it unless they have practised it in their youth. 
There is a world of pent-up bitterness in this extract 
from one of the pages of his English diary : 

"July 20th: Letty and I played golf all day long. 
I felt much encouraged yesterday, but dropped back 
to-day. This place [Barton Court] is certainly ideal 
for an impatient or a nervous beginner, because 
there are no lookers-on. We buy new clubs all the 
time, on the theory that there must be something 
wrong with our old ones." 

Two days later, as a consequence of these per- 
severing endeavours, he developed an abscess on the 
palm of his right hand, and could not play at all. If 
there is never any excuse for profanity, there are 
sometimes reasonable explanations. 



84 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

No provocation, however, could wrest from Dr. 
White an infant oath if he thought it unbecoming. 
The people whom he did not wish to hear him swear 
never did hear him swear. There were times, too, 
when fatigue and a rare dejection robbed profanity 
of all savour. "I am evidently doing what is known 
as * ageing,' " he wrote me once when I was in Rome. 
"I heard with a shock last week that my language 
on the golf links had lost all its vivacity. Too bad! To 
destroy thus a reputation based on years of lively 
endeavour. I have n't forgotten the words, but they 
don't seem to come as easily as they used to. Can it 
be that you are undermining me by praying to your 
Roman saints?" 

In one respect alone, the doctor, for all his health 
and strength and endurance, was physically ill-fitted 
for life's unending strain. He could work as hard and 
play as hard as any man of his years in Christendom. 
He could swim like a fish, and with little more effort 
than a fish might presumably make. He could cycle 
a hundred miles in a day without undue fatigue. He 
could lunch on "cakes, lemon cheesecakes, pears, 
plums, milk and cream"; and this school-boy tuck 
gave him no more uneasiness at fifty than it did at 
fifteen. But he could not sleep unless sustained and 
soothing silence composed him gradually to rest. In 
this regard he was as unblest as the great Wallen- 
stein, who pulled down all the houses around his 



THE YEARS THAT COUNT 85 

palace in Prague, so as to insure for himself quiet 
and slumberous nights. 

The summer of 1899 was spent by Dr. and Mrs. 
White, and Mr. and Mrs. S. S. White, Junior, on the 
English coast. Their days were given over to the 
usual routine of outdoor sports, and all went merrily 
save for the noises inseparable from hotel life, even 
in England, where the infernal racket of continental 
hostelries is happily unknown. Finally at Sherring- 
ham, the clatter of housemaids indoors, and ostlers 
out of doors, became so annoying that Dr. White 
suddenly and wisely resolved he would have a roof 
of his own. 

"If it were done when *t is done, then *t were well 
It were done quickly." 

Within twenty-four hours he had rented a place, 
imported a cook from Norwich, picked up a house- 
maid in some neighbouring cottage, provisioned the 
party with all things needful from coals and candles to 
sugar and suet, and dined comfortably in a house, "the 
very existence of which was unknown to us yesterday." 

This is efficiency, — efficiency which matches speed 
with thoroughness. What a secretary of war Dr. 
White would have made! 

All was not yet smooth sailing, however, for the 
intrepid householder. After two happy days and 
tranquil nights there comes this spirited entry in 
the diary: 



86 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

"Three yelping dogs broke our rest last night. The 
silence here is like the silence of death after 6 p.m. 
We were all sleepy, and turned in before ten o'clock. 
About midnight, or earlier, these three curs over in 
the farm-yard began to howl. At 1 a.m. the manly 
form of Prof. William White of Philadelphia, clad 
in pyjamas, and with a flickering candle in his left 
hand, might have been seen standing in the drizzling 
rain, pounding on the door of the farmer's cottage, 
and using language which made an area of phosphor- 
escence around the candle. As a result, the three dogs 
were locked up in separate places, and a little sleep 
was obtained. This morning I insisted that they 
should be sent off the place, and I believe it has 
been, or is to be, done. 

"I am not, and I never shall be, used to farm 
noises. I wish the little birdies had been created 
dumb. I never could see any sense in a hen making 

such a d fuss over every egg she lays; and it seems 

particularly unreasonable that, like the females of 
all other species, she should select such inconvenient 
hours for bringing her offspring into the world. This 
has been one of the complaints of obstetricians ever 
since I have known any of them." 

It is a bit unfair to hurl anathemas at hens, when 
the cock, who has not his partner's excuse for self- 
congratulation, makes such untimely and vociferous 
racket. But Dr. White's reproaches, however un- 



THE YEARS THAT COUNT 87 

justified, seem to have shamed the denizens of the 
farmyard into silence. Three days later he reports 
favourably upon their amendment: 

"We've shaken down into our places, and the 
people are used to us. The dogs have been sent away; 
the ducks have, I think, been given laudanum to 
make them sleep late in the mornings; the hens now 
cackle a sort of lullaby when they lay their eggs; the 
farmer tiptoes over the gravel path when he waters 
the pony in the early hours; the gardener wears felt 
slippers instead of hobnailed shoes; and the whole 
outfit is as quiet as could be desired." 

So much for resolution! 

In 1899, Dr. White, who had been appointed by 
President McKinley a member of the Board of Vis- 
itors of the Annapolis Naval Academy, succeeded in 
persuading various reluctant departments to permit 
the W T est Point and the Annapolis football teams to 
play on Franklin Field. It took a deal of persuasion, 
and involved many promises which were hard to 
keep. He pledged his honour that there should be 
no gate money; but he could not prevent Philadel- 
phia politicians from selling the tickets he was com- 
pelled to furnish them. It was, moreover, a difficult 
task to distribute seats "by favour only," and the 
clamorous demand far exceeded the capacity of the 
field. These Army and Navy games, which were re- 
peated for many autumns, were dear to Dr. White's 



88 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

heart. He took pride in them as a Philadelphian and 
as an American. They were spirited contests, to 
which the presence of distinguished officials lent 
interest and dignity. But from start to finish they 
involved endless labour, which he did not grudge, 
and a sort of intricate egg dance among contending 
interests, which he was not supple enough to per- 
form. Even when the authorities gave permission 
that gate money should be asked, and the proceeds 
given to the Army and Navy Relief, the difficulty of 
satisfying the public was lessened, not ended. There 
were more people who wanted to buy, and who held 
they had a right to buy, than there were tickets to 
be sold. 

A friendlier warfare had been waged for years 
between Dr. White, who was singularly reticent 
about his "cases," and the press, which sought to 
know the details of novel and intricate surgery. In 
1897 he published, in collaboration with Dr. Edward 
Martin, a work on " Genito-Urinary Surgery and Ve- 
nereal Diseases." It was an exhaustive and author- 
itative study, furnished with two hundred and forty- 
three illustrations, and seven coloured plates. The 
success which attended this volume, the opening in 
the same year of the D. Hayes Agnew Pavilion, and 
the beginning of the great drive for the University 
Gymnasium, brought the doctor so sharply before 
the public eye that an increased attention on the part 



THE YEARS THAT COUNT 89 

of reporters was perhaps inevitable. The newspapers 
claimed that when a man of science withheld timely 
and valuable information from their readers, he in- 
flicted a loss, and he suffered one. They argued with 
Waller, 

"Small is the worth 
Of beauty from the light retired.'* 

Dr. White, impervious to this reasoning, and without 
personal apprehension, expressed his point of view 
in one uncompromising sentence: "Science," he said, 
"ought not to be paraded side by side with a murder 
up an alley." It was an irreconcilable difference of 
opinion. 



CHAPTER VII 
LAST YEARS OF SURGERY 

MOST men who have lived through a half-cen- 
tury find — to their regret or to their relief — 
that they have abandoned the animating enthusiasms 
of youth. They retain a tender and reminiscential 
regard for past pleasures and extinguished zeal; but 
their real and vigorous concern is reserved for the 
cares and counsels of maturity. Dr. White never sur- 
rendered his youthful convictions, or lost his youthful 
ardour. He clarified both with the aid of reason, and 
found them better worth preserving from being more 
amply understood. His interest in athletic sports, and 
his belief in their value, strengthened with years and 
experience. If, as he lamented, "the opponents of ath- 
letics die hard," he stood ever ready to help them 
to their graves. He found time in his crowded days 
to write sturdy articles in defence of the much 
maligned football games, as well as of every other 
game which required strength and hardihood. "Man 
walked straight before he thought straight," was his 
scornful reply to upholders of the studious life. 

Being himself tall and strong, and having never 
lacked mental concentration, sustained industry, or 
professional skill, the doctor was naturally disposed 



LAST YEARS OF SURGERY 91 

to resent President Eliot's contemptuous compari- 
son of "big, brawny athletes" with "slighter, quicker- 
witted men." He saw no reason why quick wits 
should not accompany broad shoulders, and he said 
so in the plainest words at his command. The dis- 
paraging comments of the "Nation" and the "Out- 
look" upon our "gladiatorial contests," and Dr. van 
Dyke's concern over "a bone-breaking, life-imperil- 
ing game," roused him to more spirited vindication. 
Even the arguments of his friend, Thomas Robins, 
who pleaded for an open field and for players less 
highly specialized, failed to shake his "pigskin con- 
servatism." He was, it must be admitted, "com- 
plexionally averse to change"; but he brought himself 
in time to accept reasonable measures of reform, and 
to subscribe heartily to President Roosevelt's pro- 
posals for a simple and uniform eligibility code. He 
had been closely connected with students for twenty- 
five years, he knew that their animal spirits needed 
a broad outlet, and he had seen too many evils re- 
sulting from "boisterous college sprees" not to be 
fully aware of the corrective value of athletics. As 
for the "hysterical enthusiasm" which was consid- 
ered so dangerous an accompaniment of football, he 
scored heavily when he retorted that far more injury 
had been done to nations by besotting them with 
oratory than by provoking their admiration for ath- 
letics. 



m J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

It is amusing and instructive to see how this 
champion of physical prowess turned a searchlight 
upon history for examples that would illustrate his 
argument. Dr. Weir Mitchell, speaking at a dinner 
of the New York alumni of the University of Penn- 
sylvania, took the opportunity to comment severely 
upon college athletics in general, and upon football 
in particular. He said that when he was in college, 
their hero was, not the captain of a team, but their 
"honour man." "We loved Thackeray and Tenny- 
son. Some of us were enthusiastic over Socrates. Do 
college men talk of Socrates in these days?" 

Probably not. Probably not many undergraduates 
in Dr. Mitchell's youth indulged in Socratic colloquy. 
The reader and the scholar may be found in every 
seat of learning. They have survived centuries of 
sport, centuries of battle, centuries of ignorance. 
But they have always been, and will always be, the 
exception, not the rule. 

From Dr. White's point of view, work and play, 
study and athletics, walked amicably hand in hand. 
He was convinced that the men who are physically 
fit are the men of most service to the world; and that 
food and drink are not more necessary to develop- 
ment than are sunlight, oxygen, and exercise. He 
published two exhaustive papers in the "Saturday 
Evening Post," November and December, 1900, set- 
ting forth the "natural association" between physi- 



LAST YEARS OF SURGERY 93 

cal, intellectual, and moral strength, and enforcing 
his arguments with a host of amazing illustrations. 
The startled reader found himself confronted by 
Samson, "who, though he seems to have lacked dis- 
cretion, was a judge in Israel"; Csesar, who was 
"admirable in all manly sports"; Cicero, who ad- 
mitted that he owed his health to the gymnasium; 
Cato, "who drilled his muscles into activity"; Lord 
Byron, who swam; Scott, who rode; Goethe, who 
skated; Wordsworth and Dickens, who walked; 
Gladstone, who chopped wood. Dr. White even tried 
to persuade himself and his public that Kant's daily 
stroll — so methodical that the philosopher's neigh- 
bours used to set their clocks by his passing — was 
in the nature of athletics. A canvas broad enough to 
admit Samson and Kant in juxtaposition leaves little 
to be desired. I offered to stretch it further by mak- 
ing out an opposition list of eminent men who, like 
Gibbon and Littre, were never known to take any 
exercise whatever; but my services were declined. I 
was reminded that Gibbon would not stand by the 
woman whom he had asked to marry him, and that 
Littre would not face the siege of Paris, — regrettable, 
but natural, consequences of sedentary habits. 

There is no doubt that Dr. White's love for the 
University of Pennsylvania strengthened his interest 
in college sports, and deepened his concern over their 
fluctuating fortunes. There is something admirable 



91 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

and touching in this sustained devotion to his Alma 
Mater. He was a busy and a canny man; but he 
grudged no time, no labour, no money, when the 
advancement of the University was at stake. Her 
medical school was his pride and joy; her really beau- 
tiful museum — which owed its perfections to Dr. 
William Pepper and Mrs. Cornelius Stevenson — 
gave him profound satisfaction; her gymnasium was 
the project nearest to his heart. Everything the 
students did, from a Greek play to a Mask and Wig 
burlesque, fired him with interest. When they pro- 
duced "Iphigenia Among the Tauri," in the spring 
of 1903, he triumphed in this evidence of scholarship; 
and the two hundred roses presented to the players 
by the Greek colony of Philadelphia pleased him as 
much as if he had been a debutante actress receiving 
this giant ovation. Yet he was habitually impatient 
of entertainments that did not entertain. He once 
sat in front of me at a conscientious performance, by 
distinguished but deliberate amateurs, of Gilbert's 
"Engaged," which, of all plays, needs to be lightly 
handled. At the close of the second act he arose, 
bade me a cordial good-night, observed amicably, 
"I think I'll come around after breakfast to-morrow 
morning, to see how they are getting on," and van- 
ished. But the laborious presentation of "Iphigenia" 
failed to daunt him, for every student actor was, in 
some sort, his friend. 



LAST YEARS OF SURGERY 95 

If college plays gave so much satisfaction to this 
true lover of youth, college games, which in them- 
selves are well worth looking at, naturally absorbed 
his attention. He cared so much for the result, he was 
so keen for victory, that pain and pleasure gripped 
his heart whenever he watched the struggle. For six 
bitter years the University football team had suffered 
defeat at Harvard's hands. The Crimson men said 
plainly and contemptuously that the Red and Blue 
men were not worth playing against, and that if they 
were beaten for the seventh time, they should be 
dropped from the list of contestants. Therefore, when 
Penn defeated Harvard 11 to at Cambridge, in the 
autumn of 1904, the victory was a source of gratifi- 
cation to all good Philadelphians, and of profound 
felicity to Dr. White. The students celebrated the 
happy event for twenty-four tumultuous hours, 
made nuisances of themselves, as is their wont on 
such occasions, and were readily forgiven by their 
tormented, but proud and grateful townsmen. The 
following year, Pennsylvania again beat Harvard 
12 to 6 on Franklin Field; and Dr. White wrote to 
Mrs. Tom Robins, who had wired him her felicita- 
tions: "I was delirious on Saturday, wildly happy 
on Sunday, ineffably content yesterday, and am 
blandly satisfied to-day. It was what we football 
cranks call a great and glorious victory." 

Other sports laid claim to his enthusiasm, and 



96 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

brought their measure of delight and disappointment. 
In the summer of 1901 the University crew went to 
England, to row against the London Club, some Bel- 
gians, some Irishmen, and the invincible Leanders. 
Dr. White saw the new eight-oared shell christened, 
made a rousing speech to the men when they sailed, 
June 8th, on the Waesland, and followed June 15th, 
on the Minneapolis, to witness the triumph he con- 
fidently predicted. The Penn crew was exceptionally 
strong, and his assurance was justifiable. But when 
he reached Henley, and saw the Leander men train- 
ing, he knew, though his hopes still ran high, that 
the cup would be hard to win. The London Club was 
easily outrowed, the Belgians were nowhere. "Bar 
accidents, and I don't see how we can lose," he wrote 
on the morning of the great race. But although our 
men made a splendid showing, Leander came in a 
length — a bare length — ahead, and his heart was 
too sore for comfort. "I had argued myself into a 
state of absolute confidence," he admitted, "so that 
the result was a surprise, and all the harder to bear. 
It was as bad as any football defeat, — worse, I 
think, because success meant more to us. I lost $190; 
but, of course, I'd have given $1900 to see that cup 
in Houston Hall for a year." 

The next day, July 6th, there is this entry in his 
diary: "Still dull, but gradually beginning to realize 
that we must continue to live, and may (years hence) 



LAST YEARS OF SURGERY 97 

enjoy ourselves. ... It must be understood that it 

was a d d good race, and that we have nothing 

to be ashamed of." Indeed, the best of good feeling 
prevailed everywhere, and the contest was so close 
that there was no bitterness in defeat. Neither, how- 
ever, was there any solace in beating the Dublin 
crew at Killarney, because the Irishmen were so 
quickly outdistanced that the race was no race at all. 
The beauty of the scenery brought small compensa- 
tion to Dr. White's soul, and of Bantry he records in 
words which Horace Walpole might have envied: "A 
hideous, dirty, unmitigably Irish town, which makes 
you spit and scratch just to look at it." The last act 
of the drama was played in London, at the Hotel 
Cecil, where the American Society gave a jovial 
supper to the Pennsylvania men. Dr. White made a 
gallant speech, and, inasmuch as the company did 
not disperse until 5 a.m., the occasion must have been 
a pleasurable one. Nevertheless, defeat is defeat, and 
nothing can turn it into victory. "We certainly rowed 
a magnificent race," is the diary's final comment, 
"and scared them badly; but, after all, it comes back 
to the fact that the cup stays here." 

To the Army and Navy football game of 1901 came 
Mr. Roosevelt, the first American president who had 
ever graced the contest on Franklin Field. The de- 
mand for seats was more clamorous than ever, and, 
as fourteen thousand of the thirty thousand tickets 



98 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

went to West Point and Annapolis, it was clearly 
impossible to satisfy all aspirants. The tickets issued 
to politicians (to insure adequate police protection 
for the President) were sold on the sidewalk for 
twenty-five dollars each. It was a brilliant and an 
unspoiled game. Admiral Dewey was among the dis- 
tinguished guests. The sun for once forbore its cus- 
tomary trickery, and shone gloriously in a blue sky. 
Charles Daly, West Point's quarter-back, made a 
sensational run, and won the Army's victory. The 
crowd on the field shouted itself hoarse, and, when 
the President left for his train, the vaster crowd out- 
side took up the cry — so democratic but so loving — 
"Teddy! Our Teddy!" until the skies rang with their 
rapture. 

This was not the beginning of Dr. White's ac- 
quaintance with Mr. Roosevelt. The two men 
had met before. But it was an added link in the 
friendship which became the enthusiasm and the 
inspiration of the doctor's life. Every trait of Roose- 
velt's splendid personality made its straight and 
strong appeal to his spirit. The President was not 
only the most distinguished American of his day; he 
was not only the wise and intrepid ruler of the na- 
tion; but he was a man whose hand — to use Mrs. 
Wharton's fine phrase — was ever on the hilt of ac- 
tion; a man who held his country's honour and his 
own in high regard, who was so compelling he could 



LAST YEARS OF SURGERY 99 

afford to be simple, and so determined he could 
afford to be gay. To Dr. White, who thought in plain 
straight terms, who held fast to primitive things, and 
to those qualities which are the foundations of man- 
hood, Mr. Roosevelt presented an ideal which years 
failed to impair, and detraction could never weaken. 
The President called him from the beginning a 
"sworn friend," which he truly was; and showed 
a well-placed confidence in his discretion when he 
summoned him a few years later to Washington 
for a conference upon college athletics, and upon the 
new football rules which embodied some admirable 
measures of reform. 

In the summer of 1903, Sir Frederick Treves, hav- 
ing reached the zenith of his fame, and having un- 
doubtedly saved King Edward's life by his courage in 
operating ("Any other man," said the King to Syd- 
ney Holland, "would have sewed me up, and said 
that there was no abscess, or that it was too deep 
to reach"), retired from active practice. The royal 
family declined to release him; but he severed his 
connection with all humbler patients, and strongly ad- 
vised Dr. White to follow his example. He was not 
exactly like the fox who had lost his tail, because he 
had cut off his own tail; but he was solicitous that his 
friend should be as tailless as himself. "Treves has 
retired definitely and permanently," wrote Dr. White 
to Tom Robins, in September, 1903. "He has much 



100 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

to say in favour of my doing likewise. I find, how- 
ever, that I grow more extravagant and exacting 
as I grow older. That makes me hesitate about re- 
tiring." And again, when lamenting to the same 
faithful correspondent that he has had too much 
surgery and too little golf, he adds wistfully: "I am 
still looking forward to retirement, and never think 
of you without envying your freedom from daily rou- 
tine, and from anxiety, except such as is, of course, 
unavoidable. We must all of us be anxious some time 
or other about the people we care for most." 

This note of apprehension is struck again and again 
in every allusion to his profession. He was like one 
forever breaking a lance with Death, and he could 
not endure that his great opponent should sometimes 
triumph over him. 

In December, 1900, he had operated for appen- 
dicitis on Mr. John Clarke Sims. The patient was 
convalescent and considered out of danger, when he 
succumbed to a sudden attack of heart failure, and 
died before his surgeon could reach his bedside. It 
was a heavy blow to Dr. White, the harder to bear 
because the dead man had been his friend. "My af- 
fection no less than my pride was at stake," he wrote 
to me. "For weeks I have devoted all my skill and 
all my purpose to saving this one life. For weeks 
I have sacrificed both work and play. And I have 
accomplished nothing." 






LAST YEARS OF SURGERY 101 

Yet when, the following month, he came perilously 
near to an enforced retirement, having infected the 
middle finger of his right hand in the operating-room, 
he was in no wise disposed to be ousted from a career 
which he liked to talk of abandoning. He had for his 
profession that proud regard which is the natural 
outcome of achievement. The opposition of the "li- 
tigious laity" to great life-saving measures, such as 
vaccination and the use of diphtheric antitoxin, fired 
him with just wrath. The stupid jokes of comic 
papers about doctors and surgeons irritated him as 
keenly as if they had been barbed shafts of wit. I 
once ventured to quote in his hearing those merry 
lines from the "Beggar's Opera," 

"Men may escape from rope and gun, 
Some have outlived the doctor's pill"; 

but they awoke no answering smile. There were 
things he was not prepared to jest over, and the 
healing art was one of them. 

It was natural that the retirement of Sir Frederick 
Treves should have influenced his friend, because the 
two men had acquired the habit of spending part 
of their summer holidays together. In July, 1900, 
Dr. White rented an English country-house, Ingham 
New Hall, in Lessingham, two miles from the Treves' 
house in Hasboro, and slipped for once into the un- 
broken calm of rural life. When he was not bathing, 
or trying to get his bicycle repaired, he was driving 



102 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

a fat pony, " Clementina," to Stalham for butter and 
soap, or superintending the arrival of ice from Yar- 
mouth. The sole excitement of the summer was pro- 
vided by a mole, an indefatigable, unconquerable 
mole, which bade defiance to law and order. "I am 
no good as a mole catcher, and might as well go 
out of the business," writes the disconsolate tenant. 
"Strychnia enough to kill the Boer army fails to 
disagree with that beast." It was in truth a free-born 
British mole, and scorned to be routed by Ameri- 
cans. They found it there when they took the house, 
and they left it diligently raising hillocks on the lawn 
the day they drove away. 

The admirable thing about the comradeship of Dr. 
and Mrs. White and Sir Frederick and Lady Treves 
was the large liberty they allowed one another. Their 
tastes were alike, but their habits of life dissimilar. 
"What I want to do, I want to do," writes Dr. White. 
"Frederick has the same not uncommon peculiar- 
ity, and we don't always want the same thing.' The 
Englishman, for example, liked to loaf, and to be 
comfortable. The American liked to forge ahead, 
and to be entertained. When the Englishman got to 
a place which he fancied, it seemed to him a good 
reason for staying there. When the American got to 
a place which he fancied, it seemed to him a good 
reason for moving on. The Englishman had a strong 
regard for his luncheon, and an almost religious 



LAST YEAR& OF SURGERY 103 

respect for his dinner. The American was content to 
leave his meals to chance when tempted by an inter- 
esting excursion. The Englishman (and the English- 
man's wife) preferred to drive over the passes in the 
Engadine. The American (and the American's wife) 
preferred to walk, and took a genuine delight in 
surmounting difficulties, and conquering fatigue. 

"We said good-bye to the Treves," is an entry in 
the Swiss diary of the following year. "They, of 
course, were eating, and they regarded our pedes- 
trian tour" (over the Schyn Pass and on to Campfer) 
"as one of extreme danger and privation. They shud- 
der at the thought of being out of reach of food for an 
hour or two. They will go nowhere unless some English 
doctor — who is generally an ignoramus — assures 
them that the water is all right, that there have been 
no * throat cases' in the neighbourhood for years, and 
that sterilized milk can be obtained for Enid. They 
think I 'm peculiar, and I think they 're comic. All of 
us think the others do not know how to travel. We 
get on very well together, all the same." 

Nothing incensed Dr. White so deeply as being 
warned against walking too much, unless, indeed, it 
was being warned against letting Mrs. White walk 
too much. To some mild remonstrance on the part 
of her family, he answered tartly and triumphantly: 
"Letty has for years taken ten times the exercise 
that most of her women friends take, and I should 



104 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

like to have some sort of comparative test of their 
health and hers. I'll back Letty." That Dr. Osier, 
whom he warmly admired, should not more explicitly 
commend "the men who have sense enough to take 
exercise," vexed his soul; and he reproached this 
high authority — a bit unfairly — for backing " all 
the lazy, over-fed, gouty imbeciles in the commu- 
nity." Finally, when his friend, Mr. Effingham B. 
Morris, begged him to call a halt on Alpine climbs 
(a dangerous sport for his years), he retaliated with 
all the counter-accusations he could heap together in 
one scorching missive. As it chanced, Mr. Morris's 
letter reached him at Morgan Hall, where he was 
leading a gentle and blameless life with the gentle 
and blameless Abbeys, so that he was able to assume 
an air of injured innocence, as if he had been frisking 
like a lamb all summer long on the soft English turf. 
After expatiating on the joys of croquet, and his de- 
votion to that tranquil sport, he conjured his friend 
to abandon the strenuous for the simple life, and 
rebuild the foundations of health: 

"I've no doubt the Drexel estate is both honour- 
able and profitable; but if you don't take more hol- 
idays, and — since you won't climb mountains — at 
least play croquet, you '11 have a d d large hand- 
some funeral, with a lot of millionaires for honorary 
pall-bearers, and a few really sorrowing Christian 
friends like me in the hired carriages. 



LAST YEARS OF SURGERY 105 

"Your cheek in giving me good advice about 
health and safety is monumental. If you'd come 
over here and play with me in the summer, you 
would not, I suppose, accumulate so many diamonds 
for wearing purposes, but you could continue to use 
Waterbury watches and nickel scarf-pins for many 
happy years." 

It has a convincing ring, but when we read the 
records of the Swiss tramps, they sound more in- 
trepid than engaging. Mrs. White walked like a 
Trojan. Fatigue, vertigo, blistered feet, — she 
scorned them all; covered her requisite number of 
miles, climbed up and slid down the mountain-sides, 
found the right paths which Dr. White was an adept 
at losing, and came in smiling when the day was 
done, too proud and pleased to admit exhaustion. 
"Letty has two blisters; but with plaster, grease, a 
couple of pairs of stockings, etc., she pulled through 
with comparative comfort," is a typical entry in the 
diary. And, two days later, after climbing the Piz 
Nair, which Baedeker fraudulently calls "easy and at- 
tractive": "Letty has two blisters (not new ones, the 
old ones resuscitated); otherwise we are both well." 

In the summer of 1903 these dauntless pedestrians 
ventured upon a supreme test of endurance. On the 
1st of August they walked from Pontresina to La 
Rosa, a good ten miles. This was merely to get up 
steam. On the 2d of August they walked over the 



106 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

Val Viola to the Nuovi Bagni at Bormio, thirty 
miles, including an ascent of two thousand feet in 
the morning, and a descent of four thousand feet in 
the afternoon. "It was really a test of strength for 
Letty," writes Dr. White triumphantly. "We have 
had harder walks, but none so hard, hot, rough and 
stony. She wound up in good shape, and is none the 
worse for it." The next morning, August 3d, they 
started at 7.45, and walked over the Stelvio Pass, 
climbing five thousand feet, and descending four 
thousand feet to Trafoi. Here Mrs. White enjoyed 
the unwonted privilege of resting two whole days, 
while Dr. White and a couple of friends, Mr. Paine 
and Mr. Orthwein, made a successful ascent of the 
Ortler. 

This expedition was like all Alpine climbs, — a 
peerless combination of discomfort and danger. The 
three men and their guides spent the night in the 
"Payerhiitte" with a dozen adventurous souls, 
sleeping — or not sleeping — in all their clothes for 
the sake of warmth, arose at 3.30 "as fresh as daisies," 
went out at 4.25 into the frozen dark, cut their way 
over the upper glacier, and at 6.40 reached the sum- 
mit, from which "it looked as if there were nothing 
but mountains in the world." The ascent qualified 
Dr. WTuite for membership in the Swiss Alpine Club; 
and the only circumstances which humbled his legit- 
imate pride were Baedeker's belittling statement that 



LAST YEARS OF SURGERY 107 

the Ortler "is not difficult, but requires a tolerably 
steady head," and the fact that a young American 
girl, "very light and strong," climbed easily and fear- 
lessly by his side. 

The next day, August 6th, the Whites set val- 
iantly forth, and walked for eight hours and a half 
(their average was eight hours) over the Umbrail 
Pass to Santa Maria; after which they were "tired 
enough to enjoy the quiet of the night," but fresh 
enough to start at 7.30 the next morning for the 
Scarl Pass and Vulpera. "A most successful and en- 
joyable week," is Dr. White's summing up. "We 
men have climbed twenty-seven thousand feet, Letty 
nineteen thousand. I have lost fourteen pounds since 
I left Philadelphia. Letty has lost sixteen pounds. 
She stood the trip wonderfully. Orthwein and Paine 
are sure to give her a great reputation as a walker 
when they get back to the Kulm. Very few women 
could have done it." 

It is little wonder that after an August spent in 
such fashion, the Whites should have been well dis- 
posed to dally a while in England with the Treves 
(Sir Frederick promised to have all the barking, 
crowing, cackling livestock within a mile of Barton 
Court assassinated before his friend's arrival), or that 
croquet on the smooth lawn of Morgan Hall should 
have seemed a pleasant pastime. The Abbeys had 
been Dr. White's guests in the winter of 1902. 



108 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

Abbey had received the degree of Doctor of Laws 
from the University of Pennsylvania, and had ac- 
cepted a commission to decorate the State Capitol 
at Harrisburg, — work which he began with enthu- 
siasm, and was destined never to finish. The vast 
Coronation picture was still incomplete, and the bur- 
den of it grew heavier year by year. The artist was 
toiling over this canvas for several successive sum- 
mers, and he told Dr. White many amusing stories 
concerning the trials and tribulations inseparable 
from the painting of royalty. 

The Queen, he said, could never be persuaded to 
keep her appointments; and the King, who was a 
miracle of punctuality, changed his mind frequently 
and tormentingly in regard to the details of his own 
portrait. At first he was painted with the yellow 
coronation robe falling to his feet. Then he asked to 
have one leg exposed so as to exhibit the Order of the 
Garter. This was done. Then he sent word that both 
legs had better be uncovered. This involved changing 
lights and tones, and did not, from the artist's point 
of view, improve the picture; but it was also done. 
Then he proposed that Abbey should "suggest" 
Treves and Laking at the back of the royal box. 
They were, with some difficulty, suggested. Then he 
desired the same privilege for several duchesses who 
accompanied the Queen; whereupon the artist, who 
was but too well aware that everybody in that box 



LAST YEARS OF SURGERY 109 

wanted his or her presence made plain, asked grimly 
whom he should leave out to give place to the la- 
dies. There being no one to leave out, the King, with 
perfect good-humour, abandoned the duchesses to 
obscurity. 

' Abbey also told Dr. White that, when he was 
painting the Prince of Wales, the young man asked 
him how much he thought Sargent made in a year. 
Abbey said truthfully and discreetly that he did not 
know. "Do you suppose," persisted the Prince, "that 
it's £10,000?" "More likely £20,000," was the reply. 
"My God!" said England's heir, "I wish I had 
£20,000 a year." 

Another large canvas on which Abbey was engaged 
in the summer of 1902 was a decoration for the Royal 
Exchange, and represented a reunion, after a pro- 
tracted feud, of the Companies of Skinners and Mer- 
chant Tailors, in the presence of the Lord Mayor of 
London. Time, Richard III. The incident is not pre- 
cisely a high light in history, and many there are who 
have never heard of it; but it afforded the artist a 
good chance for the grouping and costuming in which 
he delighted, and in which he excelled. Having per- 
petual need of models, he pressed his guest into serv- 
ice as a master skinner. "I wear a light wig with 
hair reaching to my shoulders," wrote Dr. White in 
the diary; "a tall black cloth hat with narrow rolled- 
up brim, a long robe and a gilt chain. I look as ugly 



110 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

as H ! Perhaps it would be enough to say uglier 

than usual." 

Personal vanity was not a disturbing element in 
his constitution. The morning he left Morgan Hall, 
he paid a farewell visit to the studio, and declared 
himself well pleased with his portrait. "Some day," 
he wrote, "probably about 2102, a discerning art 
critic will say : ' There is in the right hand corner of 
the picture the head of a gray-moustached citizen 
wearing the tall black hat of the period, which is 
rightly considered as the central point of interest 
in this remarkable painting. The face, judged by the 
ordinary standards of human beauty, cannot be said 
to be perfect. The mouth is somewhat full, and the 
fact that it is partly open does not add to its at- 
tractiveness. The eyes are over prominent, and have 
a tendency to what was known in those days as 
blinking. The jowls are too accentuated, and the 
nose not enough so, being indeed slightly retrousse, 
whereas if it had been longer, and inclined down- 
ward, it might have partly hidden the conspicuous, 
upper central incisors. These, however, are mere 
details. What makes this face the gem of the pic- 
ture, and of all the pictures of this master, is the 
expression of almost superhuman intelligence, of 
saintliness of spirit, of purity of soul, of pensive 
benevolence, of meekness and abnegation when self- 
interest is involved, but firmness and decision when 



LAST YEARS OF SURGERY 111 

the rights of friends are jeopardized, which character- 
izes every feature. If Abbey had painted nothing else 
but this one face, it would in itself justify his im- 
perishable reputation, and entitle him to rank above 
Frans Hals and Velasquez.' " 

When we consider that, in addition to conferring 
immortality upon his host, Dr. White operated on 
the Abbeys' beloved black cat, Tinker, removing a 
malignant growth from the animal's poor little head, 
and prolonging one of its fleeting lives, we can un- 
derstand his value as a guest, and the warmth of 
welcome which awaited him. 

Perhaps the obduracy of golf inclined him gently 
to the Abbeys' favourite sport, croquet. He wrote me 
once (when his patients were getting well, and mat- 
ters at the University were all going his way) that if 
his game of golf would but improve, he 'd ask nothing 
else of fate. But though it did improve, he never was 
satisfied with its amendment. After a week's practice 
on the links of Maloja, in the summer of 1901, his 
only triumph was beating a Baltimore invalid who 
had been suffering from nervous prostration: "I am 
going to challenge the blind asylum when I get 
home," is his bitter comment. "I should be afraid 
of the deaf and dumb." 

Yet, in their humble way, both Dr. and Mrs. White 
distinguished themselves on the Maloja links. Mrs. 
White hit a ponderous German on the head, and he 



112 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

said so often and so accusingly that she had "nearly 
killed" him, that Dr. White, who had seconded his 
wife's profuse apologies, was finally impelled to offer 
to finish the job. Two days later, the doctor "took 
another German in the small of the back with a 
hundred and twenty-five yard brassie," awakening 
violent profanity; and the following morning hebowled 
over, "with a hard-driven, low-pulled ball," a little 
Italian caddy. For one horrid moment he feared he had 
seriously hurt the boy; but an examination showed 
nothing more alarming than a bruised hand, which 
was speedily righted with a cold-water bandage, a 
friendly word, and the gift of a two-franc piece. 

Another distinct advantage of croquet was the 
impossibility of losing one's way between the hoops. 
Dr. W T hite always vowed he could be lost in Ritten- 
house Square; but Rittenhouse Square is a vast area 
by comparison with a tennis court or a croquet 
ground. He was the most eminent path-loser of his 
day, and could always be trusted to choose a long 
and hard route when there was a short and easy one. 
"The Lord has not been very good to me in the 
matter of talents," he wrote candidly. "I cannot 
sing, or make music, or paint, or speak foreign 
tongues easily. But He has given me a wonderful 
insight into the wrong ways of getting — or not 
getting — anywhere. I can beat the world at losing 
myself. That's a proud thought at any rate." 



LAST YEARS OF SURGERY 113 

In the spring of 1903, John Sargent spent a month 
with Dr. White; and a great deal of gaiety was 
necessarily crowded into two very busy lives. The 
artist had been hard at work all winter, and had 
painted among other pictures the masterly portrait 
of President Roosevelt, remarkable, not only for its 
force and purpose, but also, as Owen Wister pathet- 
ically remarked, for having the first frock coat he 
had ever seen "rendered gracious and harmonious." 
I was in Rome that year, and Dr. White found time 
— I don't see how — to write me an unwontedly 
long letter, full of the joys and sorrows of a Phila- 
delphia May. 

" I have lived in what seems to have been a whirl — 
though a pleasant one — for a month. Sargent came 
here four weeks ago to-day, and goes to New York 
this afternoon, to sail on Saturday for Gibraltar. I 
like him more than ever, and wish he could be here 
for another month; but, of course, there have been 
dinners, and late hours, and less exercise than usual, 
so that I shall have some lost rest to make up be- 
tween now and my sailing time, — June 19th. His 
work here has been splendid. Mitchell's portrait is 
superb; but he, Sargent, thinks (and Thomas Eakins, 
John Lambert, and other artists agree with him) 
that the best thing he did in Philadelphia is an oil 
sketch of Mrs. White, begun and completed last 
Sunday, — two sittings of two hours each, — and so 



114 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

full of life and animation and spirit that it is truly 
wonderful. It does n't flatter her, or make her seem 
younger than she is; it is not a photographic like- 
ness; but it has something that I am not skilled 
enough to describe, and that represents Sargent at 
his best. I am delighted to have it. He insisted on 
doing it, and we had not self-denial to refuse, though 
we tried to do so. 

"We have had tropical weather here for some days, 
92° in the shade, — and wretched criminals expect- 
ing me to operate on them. My only comfort is in a 
single shell on the Schuylkill, clad — I, not the shell 
— in undershirt and drawers. I begrudge the hours 
I spend at work. Rittenhouse Square is noisy with 
the vociferous play of millions of the useless progeny 
of my neighbours, the back street in the early morn- 
ing is pandemonium, — and it is one month from 
to-morrow that I sail." 

Again the note of impatience and weariness, — the 
hours "begrudged" to work. Treves was by this 
time a free man, and meditating a journey around 
the world. One daughter, Hetty, had died. The 
other, Enid, had married Colonel Delme'-Radcliffe, 
who was then officially surveying, and incidentally 
lion-hunting, in northern Uganda. Dr. White prom- 
ised his friends that he would meet them in San 
Francisco, when the globe-circling tour landed them 
on our shores, and the promise was nobly kept. It is 



LAST YEARS OF SURGERY 115 

a far cry from Rittenhouse Square to the Golden 
Gate; but when Sir Frederick, Lady Treves, and Mrs. 
Delme-Radcliffe landed in May, 1904, Dr. and Mrs. 
White were on the docks to receive them. The Eng- 
lish ladies frankly confessed that they had had a 
surfeit of travel. To stay in one place now seemed to 
them the best of earthly joys. Therefore, when they 
found themselves moderately comfortable in Wawona, 
in Wawona they resolved to remain, while Sir Fred- 
erick and the Whites went to the Yosemite. "I 
did n't argue," writes Dr. White virtuously. "After 
all, as I said to Lady Treves, they were under no 
obligation, moral or otherwise, to 'do' the Yosem- 
ite; and if they were happier in Wawona, no one 
•could object to their staying there." 

This was a handsome concession. In ruder and less 
tolerant days, no one had ever heard such words 
from the doctor's lips. He was beginning to realize — 
in the case of other people, not yet in his own — 
that there are limits to endurance. 

As Treves was to receive a degree from the Uni- 
versity of Pennsylvania on the 13th of June, as 
they were to visit the Grand Canyon on their east- 
ward flight, as there were social engagements looming 
on the Philadelphia horizon, and as the whole party 
were to sail for England on June 24th, Lady Treves 
and her daughter may have had some excuse for 
relinquishing the rare loveliness of the Yosemite. 



116 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

And perhaps they would not have found it lovely. I 
once made some rapturous comment upon its beauty 
to Alice Meynell, and that distinguished lady replied 
that she did not consider the Yosemite beautiful. It 
was, she said, on too vast a scale for beauty. 
* The distinctive feature of this summer was Dr. 
White's ascent of the Piz Palii, one of the highest 
peaks of the upper Engadine, a climb of which even 
Baedeker the scornful speaks with becoming rever- 
ence, as "trying, not advisable except when the 
snow is firm, and requiring a steady head." The Piz 
Palii is 12,835 feet, only a little lower and a little less 
dangerous than the Piz Bernina. Mr. Paine was 
again his companion. They had the two best guides in 
the Engadine, and the expedition was of sufficient 
importance to be gravely and admiringly chronicled in 
the "Alpine Post." For a man in his fifty-fourth year, 
who had made but one other ascent, it was an amaz- 
ing feat. Dr. White confessed to extreme fatigue; 
but, beyond a few cuts and bruises, seemed none the 
worse for it. There is a characteristic entry in his 
diary, the day before he started: "I've borrowed 
Orthwein's ice-axe, Paine's second jersey, Bott's 
gaiters — to keep the snow out of my shoes — and 
Letty's dark glasses. If I fall down a precipice, or a 
crevasse, there will be four people interested in find- 
ing the remains." 

In December, 1904, the long hoped-for, long 



LAST YEARS OF SURGERY 117 

planned-for, long fought-for gymnasium was at last 
opened to the students of the University. For years 
Dr. White had worked with grim determination over 
this cherished scheme. For years he had counted no 
labour too heavy, no enthusiasm too keen, no sacri- 
fice too great, where its advancement was concerned. 
In April, 1902, he was able to write to Thomas 
Robins that $200,000 had been raised, and that the 
bond issue of $262,000 had been fully subscribed. 
The building cost when completed nearly $600,000. 
Its beauty, its scope, its admirable equipment, were 
due to him. His unfaltering resolution and con- 
tagious zeal animated his townsmen, and spurred 
them to repeated efforts. The College alumni re- 
sponded nobly to his call. The day that he formally 
presented this gymnasium to the University was 
perhaps the proudest and happiest of his life. In a 
few simple words he told of his early hopes, of his 
harsh disappointments, of his seven years of toil. He 
also announced a bequest of $50,000 from the estate 
of Mr. William Weightman to the endowment fund, 
— a bequest which he had personally beguiled from 
the testator. Provost Harrison accepted the new 
building in the name of the trustees, and Dr. R. Tait 
McKenzie, sculptor, and Director of Physical Edu- 
cation, made an admirable address. The relations 
between this keen and brilliant young Canadian and 
Dr. W T hite were of the friendliest character. Six 



118 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

months after the opening of the gymnasium, Dr. 
McKenzie wrote to Dr. White: "What your advice 
and friendship have meant to me in this trying year 
of strangeness and pioneer work I need never tell 
you. If you are a telepathist, you must have felt it. 
I am not likely ever to forget, and I hope I may yet 
have a chance to repay it in small part, leaving al- 
ways a debt that I am glad to owe." 

In January, 1905, Henry James came to Phila- 
delphia, to give his lecture on Balzac before the 
Contemporary Club. It was his maiden effort, the 
first time he had heard his own voice raised in public, 
and he was correspondingly nervous and depressed. 
Dr. White put him up at the Rittenhouse Club, and 
gave him a supper after the meeting, snatching 
wisely at that happy hour when — the burden lifted 
— a speaker becomes once more a free and happy 
man. Mr. James before the lecture, and Mr. James 
after the lecture, was a study in gloom and gaiety. 
He and his host had never met until that January 
night; and just as the great law of sympathy or- 
dained that Dr. White and Roosevelt should be 
friends, so the great law of contrast ordained that 
Dr. White and James should also be friends, under- 
standing each other from the first hour they met, 
and trusting each other to the last. On his subse- 
quent visits to Philadelphia, the great novelist was 
always the surgeon's guest. Dr. White never ex- 



LAST YEARS OF SURGERY 119 

ploited him, never flattered him, never teased him 
with questions; but just gave him honest liking, 
freedom, and leisure; while Mrs. White saw to it that 
he had the warm fires and soft blankets which he 
dearly loved, being the chilliest man in Christendom. 
It is little wonder that when he left these pleasant 
quarters to wander through the frozen South, Mr. 
James's letters were full of regret for lost comforts 
and companionship. He wrote from Biltmore that he 
had been increasingly cold ever since he crossed the 
Mason and Dixon line; that Richmond, "wrapped in 
ice and snow" (it was a very inclement winter), had 
desolated him; and that Biltmore House was "mag- 
nificent, imposing, and utterly unaddressed to any 
possible arrangement of life, or state of society, or 
recruiting of company, in this huge, sordid, niggery 
wilderness, which was all I saw after leaving the 
melancholy Richmond." He pictured himself hob- 
bling goutily through vast and chilly corridors, look- 
ing out of "colossal icy windows," and sighing for 
what seemed by comparison "the cosy little house 
on Rittenhouse Square," with the "rich security of 
its stained and pictured library," and with the sunny 
suite of rooms which had been his own, and for 
which he had acquired a cat-like attachment. He 
would, he said, joyfully exchange the "whole per- 
pendicular English staff" of Biltmore for "a single 
snatch of Mrs. Morton and little Joseph." 



120 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

This seems a fitting time (inasmuch as she has 
been formally introduced by Henry James) to say a 
few words about Mrs. Morton, who was a familiar 
and characteristic feature of Dr. White's establish- 
ment. She was his housekeeper when he first ac- 
quired a bachelor home on Sixteenth Street, and she 
remained his housekeeper until he died. She had 
been a sick nurse, and came to him because (a widow 
with an only son) she wanted to keep this child by 
her side. The doctor took a strong interest in the boy, 
who went to the public schools, studied medicine at 
the University, married, and acquired a country 
practice and a family. But not even the lure of 
grandchildren could win Mrs. Morton from her post. 
Her affection for Dr. White, an affection duly mingled 
with honour and with pride, was the great emotion 
of her life. To talk about him was her keen delight. 
She knew his crotchets, and conceded them. She also 
knew his worth; — his loyalty, his immaculate in- 
tegrity, his boundless kindness to poor patients 
whose paymaster is God. She could tell tales of his 
devotion to these humble clients, about whom he 
maintained a rigorous silence. "What praise is more 
valuable than the praise of an intelligent servant?" 
asks Jane Austen, who knew that it is to our own 
households we oftenest expose our inconsistencies. 
Mrs. Morton's spare, upright figure, her white hair 
and smiling face, remained a pleasant memory in the 



LAST YEARS OF SURGERY 121 

minds of many guests. The references to her in their 
letters mark the dignity and importance of her po- 
sition. Her fidelity deepened with every year of serv- 
ice; and when the end came, and Dr. White's be- 
quest made her handsomely independent, she simply 
transferred her whole allegiance to Mrs. White, who 
had formerly shared it, and lived on in the old house 
which had held all the substance and sweetness of 
her life. 

The power of attaching to himself people who 
worked for him, or with whom he came into daily 
contact, was Dr. White's lifelong gift. He estab- 
lished relationships which stood the test of time. He 
did not forget, and he was not forgotten. When in 
the summer of 1903 he found himself in the neighbour- 
hood of Lulworth, he motored over to see the old 
couple whose cottage he had rented eleven years 
before, and who had looked carefully after his com- 
fort. He found his former landlord failing fast, and 
made this entry in his diary: "Mem: — To send Mrs. 
Haytor a sovereign every Christmas, and increase it 
to two after Haytor' s death." 

Mention has been made of " Professor" Billy Mc- 
Lean, in whose gymnasium Dr. White encountered 
the friendly bruiser who had erstwhile thirsted for his 
blood. McLean was a boxer from whom the doctor 
had acquired the art of self-defence, and who was 
prodigiously proud of his pupil. He loved to match 



m J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

him against professionals, to "try him out"; and on 
one occasion brought three of these gentry, Forsyth, 
Arnold, and McNallery, to the house on Ritten- 
house Square, and presented them to its master as 
opponents worthy of his skill. "The doctor," he said, 
"would box with any one." On this occasion the 
combat was so sustained and so glorious that Ar- 
nold, who had driven a peaceful milk wagon before 
he took to the fancy, asked with some asperity if he had 
been lured into a gentleman's house to be murdered. 
When McLean grew old, Dr. White obtained for 
him a post as one of the guardians of Rittenhouse 
Square; and there the former pugilist looked after 
the playing children, rescued their boats from foun- 
dering in the pool, and told hilarious stories of his 
youth. "Once," he confessed to me, "I got into 
some little trouble. Well, no matter what it was 
about. I got out of it anyhow. The next time I saw 
Dr. White, he said: 'Billy, when you were in trouble 
the other day, why didn't you send for me?' I 
thanked him, and told him I had n't any need to. 
And the very next day, what did he do but knock 
down a fellow who had insulted him, and get himself 
arrested for doing it. I waited until he came to my 
rooms, and I said to him: 'Doctor, I heard you were 
in trouble the other day. Why did n't you send for 
me?' He just looked at me, and 'Billy,' said he, 'you 
gotoH !'" 



LAST YEARS OF SURGERY 123 

On the 22d of February, 1905, the University of 
Pennsylvania conferred the degree of Doctor of 
Laws on President Roosevelt and the German Em- 
peror. Baron von Sternburg accepted the honour 
in the name of the Kaiser, who cabled this urbane 
message: 

Dr. Charles C. Harrison, Provost, 

University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. 
I am truly glad that the University has tendered 
me, at the same time with President Roosevelt, the 
academic honour that once clothed George Washing- 
ton. I beg you to accept with my thanks my best 
wishes for the continued growth and prosperity of 
the University. 

Wilhelm, Imperator Rex, Berlin 

It is significant that President Roosevelt, who was 
the orator of the day, should have made a plain and 
practical appeal for protection against imperialism; 
pleading then, as he had pleaded before, and as he 
pleaded until the end, for that wise and warlike 
preparation which alone can insure us safety. 

Dr. White's admiration and affection for the Pres- 
ident had deepened with the deepening of knowl- 
edge and experience. A year before this celebration, 
Thomas Robins accused his friend of trying to win 
him over to warmer partisanship by sending him 



124 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

all the derogatory editorials in the " Nation.' ' The 
scheme worked. A steadfast course of reviling is sure 
to awaken contrary emotions in generous hearts. 
Robins admitted that, after reading one particu- 
larly virulent attack, "Roosevelt became tolerable im- 
mediately," and he stood ready to vote for him like 
a man. "The Nation pulled me around." 

On the great question of national security, Dr. 
White held strong and sane views. He was the last 
man in Christendom to pose as a prophet; but neither 
was he ever content to live in a fool's paradise. Ger- 
many had made plain her malevolence in the Spanish 
War. He no more dreamed than did his neighbours 
that she was planning fresh conquests in Europe, 
and that within ten years she would turn the world 
into shambles; but he was well aware that she was 
making trouble for us in Mexico. As far back as 
1899 he records in his diary a devout wish that the 
United States would strengthen her navy, and ally 
herself defensively with Great Britain; so that when 
Germany plotted against us in Samoa, Mexico, or 
the Philippines, we could put a stopper on her mis- 
chievous designs. 

In the spring of 1905 the first symptoms of heart 
trouble intruded themselves menacingly upon Dr. 
White's reluctant consciousness. He had always been 
superbly healthy and superbly active. He could not 
contemplate life under any other conditions. He was 



LAST YEARS OF SURGERY 125 

then hard at work on the section of Piersol's "Hu- 
man Anatomy" which dealt with practical surgery, 
toiling over it with that concentration of purpose 
which accomplished such marvellous results. " Yester- 
day," he wrote on March 20th to Tom Robins, "was 
a rainy day, and I sat at my desk from 10.30 a.m. to 
7.30 p.m. Letty is at the Hot Springs. I will not go 
down, as I want to get the book finished this spring." 

By May he was so much worse that rest was im- 
perative, and in early June he made a careful note of 
his condition, and of Dr. Stengel's diagnosis. "For 
the first time in my life I have reason to think I am 
not entirely sound, having suffered for ten weeks 
from an irritable heart, my symptoms consisting of 
arrhythmia, palpitation, and a variable, but at 
times decided, mitral systolic murmur. This is sup- 
posed [to be due to heart strain during my recent 
mountain climbing experiences. I am told that there 
is no valvular disease, but that I probably have some 
form of myocardial degeneration. The month at the 
seashore did me so much good that I hoped the 
trouble was disappearing; but four days in Phila- 
delphia, with the hurry and worry of getting ready 
to sail, have brought back most of the symptoms. So 
much for this troublesome business." 

To Thomas Robins, then in California, he wrote 
more fully and freely about his health than he did to 
any other correspondent. The initials "S. I.," which 



126 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

stood for saintly invalid (himself), became increas- 
ingly frequent in his letters. He admitted to this 
sympathetic friend his discouragement and his pro- 
found disgust. Dr. Stengel promised him that he 
might live many years if he would give up every- 
thing which made life worth having. For that form 
of amusement known as "moderate exercise" he 
had no taste whatever. To abandon climbing, tramp- 
ing, cycling, swimming, coffee and tobacco, consti- 
tuted a heavy draft on renunciation. The only indul- 
gence he relinquished without concern was alcohol. 
Robins wrote back much good advice, given with the 
solicitude of affection. He made up lists of reasonable 
pleasures which the saintly invalid might still enjoy, 
and he pointed out, with the perspicuity of an ob- 
servant friend, a few roads to reform: "If you will 
only lop off mountain climbing, walk after your golf 
ball instead of rushing at it like a mad bull, and sit 
quietly in your box at the ball games instead of wav- 
ing your arms like windmills on the side-lines, you 
will surely live to the eighties." 

"Human Anatomy" was ready for the printers 
by the end of May, and, on the 16th of June, Dr. and 
Mrs. White sailed for England. In London, Dr. Osier 
made a careful examination of the patient, confirmed 
Dr. Stengel's diagnosis, permitted a few weeks in 
Switzerland, and prescribed a cure at Bad Nauheim. 

It is worthy of comment that during this summer 



LAST YEARS OF SURGERY 127 

of ill-health and anxiety, when week after week Dr. 
White's symptoms grew more pronounced, his days 
less profitable, his nights devoid of ease, the diary 
becomes for the first time in sixteen years riotously 
humorous. It is as though the sick man, determined 
not to repine, took refuge in dwelling hilariously 
upon every absurd incident, and in laughing his wife 
out of her deep concern. He fills pages with teasing 
descriptions of her interrogatory conversation, her 
ruthless interruptions to his poetic flights, the pe- 
riodic losses of jewelry which enliven dull days, and 
her fluttering fear of mice. "It is strange," he muses, 
"how easily these animals — with presumably no 
education in the matter — can tell a man from a 
woman. It must be something about our legs or our 
underclothes which enlightens them." 

One astute and valorous mouse "of the dangerous 
variety known as the Souribus Ferox, or woman- 
eating mouse of the Engadine," attacked Mrs. White 
in their sitting-room in the Hotel Kulm, St. Moritz. 
"She was alone at the time, but fortunately I was 
in the next room, or Heaven knows what might not 
have happened. She gave a shriek that startled the 
hotel, caused crowds to gather in the road below our 
windows, and put back my heart cure one calendar 
month. I rushed in, but the mouse was gone. No one 
has seen it except Letty; but she now has our suite 
so full of mouse traps that there's no room for fur- 



128 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

niture. This is a sample of our daily conversation: 
" 8 a.m. Letty appears, to the extent of putting her 
head in my room and yawning: 'Have any mice been 
caught in the traps?' 'No, dear.' 'Why not?' 'I don't 
know, love.' 'Have you looked at them?' 'I have, 
and I caught my toe in one of them when I got up 
to draw the curtains.' 'Well, did you set it again?' 
'No, sweetheart.' 'Why not?' 'Because I love the 
cute little mice, and I like to see them around, and 
enjoy their innocent gambols, and — ' Door slams." 
As for the long threatened paper on "Morning 
Noises of the World," some valuable notes were 
secured for it in Switzerland. The travellers spent 
one night at Siis, having crossed the Fliiella Pass en 
route to St. Moritz, had an excellent dinner, and 
slept the sleep of the weary until 4 a.m., when this is 
what took place under their windows, ■ — the diary 
recording each event in order: 

1. (4 o'clock): Boy with a shrill tin whistle calling 
cows. 

2. Cows with large bells on their necks. 

3. Shepherds talking to each other. 

4. Shepherds talking to a female. 

5. Shepherds and female all talking at once. 

6. Sheep with small bells on their necks, and lambs 
bleating. 

7. Rooster crowing directly under window, and try- 
ing to outdo another rooster around the corner. 



LAST YEARS OF SURGERY 129 

8. Two hens join rooster, and cackle. 

9. Rooster and hens put to flight by a tumblerful 
of water from J. W. W. 

10. Horses (with bells) led through the streets. 

11. Early diligence passes. 

12. Rooster and hens return, and are again put to 
i flight. 

13. Goatherd with a long horn, blowing loudly. 

14. Goats with medium-sized bells on their necks. 

15. Hens again. 

16. Reapers with scythes, talking loudly on their 
way to work. 

17. Rooster again. By this time it was 6.20, and I 
got up. So did Letty. 

If good advice could keep any of us on the straight 
and narrow path of prudence, Dr. White need never 
have lost his footing. Friends and acquaintances 
wrote to him all summer, enjoining a contemplative 
life, and pointing out the beauties of inaction. 
Among them was Henry James, who, after urging 
his friend to come to Rye, implored him with whim- 
sical intentness to surrender himself for once to the 
limitations imposed by illness. "When you tell me 
you are not well, I see it only means that the rank- 
ness of your pride and the violence of your past are 
not sufficiently laid low. . . . Nauheim is, I believe, 
beautiful and benignant, and never fails with those 



130 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

of its children who really consent to nestle on its 
bosom. Nestle close! Nestle, and don't wrestle, ac- 
cording to your vice and wont. That's all you re- 
quire, — to 'permanently give up wrestling. I, for one, 
shall feel myself better for your having done so. The 
sense that you have quit it will act quite as my own 
private little Nauheim." 

From a friend of six months' standing, this letter 
shows as much insight as affection. Its plea, and the 
oft repeated pleas of other correspondents, were fully 
granted; for it is in the nature of all "cures" to turn 
their patients into pulp, to deaden every vital im- 
pulse, to conquer the souls as well as the bodies of 
their victims. When Dr. White had been ten days at 
Nauheim, he was as inert as a garden snail. "The 
laziness of the place is really getting into my bones," 
he writes in the diary. "To-day I've walked to the 
bath-house (four minutes) and back; and to the Kur- 
haus (ten minutes) and back. That's all, and yet I 
feel as if I 'd had quite enough exercise, — perhaps 
a shade too much." 

Thermal baths, "resembling Schuylkill water after 
a heavy rain," filled up a modicum of time. Massage, 
"resting," and "fooling about "filled up the rest. To 
play with some engaging little children at the Kur- 
haus became a recognized pastime; to "listen to the 
music" figured as recreation; an illumination in the 
hotel garden was a real event. Dr. Heineman, the 



LAST YEARS OF SURGERY 131 

Nauheim physician recommended by Dr. Osier, 
urged his patient to be "placid" (he might as well 
have asked him to be timorous or affable), and to 
"take things quietly," which he tried hard to do. He 
notes with increasing frequency in the diary his suc- 
cessful essays at passivity. "Begin alkathrepta this 
a.m. instead of coffee. Ha! Ha!" "To-day I stayed 
eleven minutes instead of six in the bath, waiting for 
the man to come and take me out and dry me. God 
knows it's a wonder I'm not dead." 

There seems to have been a forlorn pleasure in 
laughing at his own plight, at the 

"masterful negation and collapse 
Of all that made him man." 

On the 8th of August he records feelingly: "Out of 
the last twenty-four hours I have spent fifteen 'rest- 
ing' in a recumbent position. By the time my five 
weeks are up, I shall have had more continuous, 
consecutive rest than I've had in nearly fifty -five 
years. And the trouble is they don't send you away 
for your after-cure to exercise, and get up your 
muscle again; but insist that you must then take 
more rest, to recuperate from the baths. Heaven 
knows what I'll be like in October. I never exercise 
on a steamer anyhow. I'll probably arrive home in 
a bonnet and veil, with a little knit shawl over my 
shoulders, black fingerless mittens on my hands, 
open-work stockings, high-heeled red morocco slip- 



J. WILLJAM WHITE, M.D. 

pers, a lorgnette instead of spectacles, and a caba 
to hold a little bottle of smelling-salts, one of cologne, 
a piece of orris root to bite on occasionally, and a 
nice little black Testament. If Ethel and Florence 
see any one like that running at them with shrill cries 
of joy, they'll know it's their Uncle Bill." 

Dr. Heineman's diagnosis of the case was an "irri- 
table heart from suppressed gout." This concurred 
with Dr. White's own convictions, and with Dr. 
Osier's theory that the trouble was "pure neurosis." 
There were days when the patient felt himself 
bounding, or at least sauntering, back to health, 
and days when he was profoundly discouraged. 
Clear Sprudel baths replaced the more homelike 
"Schuylkill" dips; the children went away with their 
arms full of Dr. White's farewell gifts; the weather 
grew cold. The hour of departure brought with it a 
sense of well-merited improvement, which was not 
destined to last. Ostend, or at least the Palace Hotel, 
a mile or so out of that "Franco-Belgian-German 
ghetto," had been chosen as an after-cure. "Sargent 
is off to Jerusalem," wrote Dr. White to Thomas 
Robins. "I asked him why Ostend wouldn't have 
done as well. There are more Jews there. Of course 
his visit is in the interest of his work in the Boston 
Library. I hate to see such paintings put in such a 
God-forsaken place as that dreary corridor assigned 
to them." 



LAST YEARS OF SURGERY 133 

A verdict with which many readers will agree. 

A brief visit to Henry James at Rye was immensely 
cheering to the invalid. He wrote that he had sud- 
denly lost all his homesickness, and should like to 
stay in England for a month. The old house, the old 
town, and his kind host gave him a serene sense of 
well-being, which not even the rainy weather could 
dispel. He listened delightedly to the chronicles of 
the country-side, and to personal reminiscences, 
jotting down occasionally such an item as this: "I 
want to record, for the purpose of telling Harrison 
Morris some day, that the best selling story James 
ever wrote — 'Daisy Miller' — was first offered to 
'Lippincott's Magazine/ and was promptly rejected 
by the editor, John Foster Kirk. 'Daisy Miller' was 
subsequently pirated in America" (the shame of it!), 
"and seventy-five thousand copies were sold." 

Morgan Hall was as soothing and as sympathetic 
as Lamb House, although the patient suffered so 
severely at this time that Dr. Osier made a little 
journey to see him. Fresh advice was given, new 
remedies were tried. "I am beginning to have my 
own view about the situation," is Dr. White's grim 
comment. "But I've had so many views — of my 
own and of others — and they 're so devoid of practical 
results, that I'm not going to waste time in putting 
down any more. The camphor is keeping the moths 
out of my heart anyhow. That 's a great comfort." 



134 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D.' 

The summer he counted a failure (there was no 
other possible verdict), and the winter to which he 
returned was full of cares and contrarieties. Here and 
there were bright spots in the gloom. The election of 
Treves as Lord Rector of Aberdeen University gave 
him sincere pleasure; and he accepted (provisionally) 
his friend's invitation to represent the University of 
Pennsylvania, and receive a degree at Aberdeen's 
Four Hundredth Anniversary. He abandoned defi- 
nitely and forever his surgical practice, taking this 
long-meditated step for reasons which were more 
convincing to himself than to his friends and patients. 
He retained, however, the John Rhea Barton Chair 
of Surgery at the University, and gave his lectures 
with unstinted zeal. 

There was much football clamour in the air, but 
some of it passed him by. Columbia relinquished the 
game which had never been her long suit. The col- 
leges in general were keen for reform. The Army 
and Navy game was played at Princeton instead 
of on Franklin Field, which was unable to furnish 
the requisite space to West Point and Annapolis. 
President Roosevelt was again present. The distin- 
guished guests were royally entertained; but thou- 
sands of visitors, unable to obtain other food than a 
chance sandwich (which they refused to consider in 
the light of luncheon), and heart-broken over the dif- 
ficulties of transit (it is a stout heart that Prince- 



LAST YEARS OF SURGERY 135 

ton Junction cannot break), sighed for the flesh-pots 
of Philadelphia. No wonder there should be a note 
of genuine satisfaction in a letter written by Dr. 
White to Thomas Robins, January 30, 1906, and 
containing the welcome news that the repentant au- 
thorities had signified their desire to return to their 
old quarters: 

"The Army -Navy game is to be played next De- 
cember on Franl^lin Field. This was arranged yester- 
day. We were generous, and promised we would 
make some extra provision for them" (West Point 
and Annapolis) "on a temporary stand, although we 
would not recede an inch from our original position, 
and give them more than two-thirds of the present 
seats. I believe, on the whole, that we have done 
right, and that they have had a lesson which will 
enable them to appreciate what they are getting 
when they come here. I am glad they went to Prince- 
ton, for until they tried elsewhere, they did not know 
how comfortable they were with us." 

In this month (January, 1906), Dr. White, smitten 
with the desire for a country home which comes to 
every man at least once in a lifetime, bought the 
very beautiful property in Delaware County known 
as the "Old Farm." It was an estate of a hundred 
and thirty-seven acres, with a good colonial house 
somewhat out of repair. "You will see that I have 
provided elaborately for the use of my spare time 



136 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

during the few remaining years of my life," he wrote 
to Robins; who, in return, besought him eloquently 
to do what no owner of a country home has ever 
been known to do, — live in it: "When you are in the 
country give up the pursuits of town, all the pomps 
and vanities of the wicked world, and the pride 
thereof. Burn your bridges and be a countryman, 
and you will be happy. But if you become a subur- 
banite, cleaving unto Rittenhouse Square, you will 
be miserable, and will promptly sell the place. All of 
which I firmly believe." 

| Dr. Osier, who was Dr. White's guest this winter, 
and still much concerned about his health, was en- 
thusiastic over the curative powers of field and 
meadow. "The farm, I dare say, will be your salva- 
tion," he wrote after his return to England. This 
pleasant conceit was echoed from every side. There 
are hosts of people ready to believe that a town 
mouse, transported to the country, becomes forth- 
with a country mouse, changing its nature with the 
changing scene. The only dissentient voice in this 
chorus of congratulation came from Dr. Martin. 
"What is the first thing I'd better do with this 
place?" asked the proud proprietor; to which his 
friend replied concisely and conclusively, "Pave it." 
In April, the California earthquake, followed by 
the disastrous fires in San Francisco, filled the coun- 
try with dismay and commiseration. "Thousands are 



LAST YEARS OF SURGERY 137 

stripped as naked as they were born," wrote Thomas 
Robins from San Mateo. "Men who had large in- 
comes have now nothing for daily needs; yet they are 
full of hope for the future. I did not dream that the 
highly specialized modern could face the conditions 
of the cave man with such uncomplaining alacrity." 

Dr. White's first concern was for the safety and 
welfare of his friend. When this anxiety had been set 
at rest, he applied himself vigorously to measures of 
relief. He sent a strong appeal to the alumni of the 
University of Pennsylvania in behalf of their fellow 
students, who, scattered along the Pacific Coast, had 
been involved in the universal ruin. "Some of them 
are young men who worked their way through col- 
lege, and had succeeded in establishing themselves 
in the pursuit of their chosen avocations. Physicians, 
lawyers, chemists and engineers have lost their li- 
braries, instruments, household goods and clothing, 
and are now in genuine and extreme distress. Where 
can they turn in their hour of need with more cer- 
tainty of freely proffered aid than to their Alma 
Mater?" 

The response to this call was so generous (even the 
Mask and Wig Club broke its rules, and gave a 
benefit performance), the fund was so well admin- 
istered, and the demands upon it were so decently 
moderate (American gentlemen do not take help 
unless it be a sore necessity), that, after "central 



138 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

California had been raked with a fine tooth comb for 
Pennsylvania men in need," there was actually money 
left in the treasury, — money for which no Univer- 
sity graduate applied. 

This relief fund was Dr. White's last public activ- 
ity for the year 1906. His health had been indifferent 
all winter and spring. He believed and said that he 
was holding his own; that, notwithstanding many 
bad days and nights, the heart trouble had made 
little or no progress. He had given up violent exer- 
cise, and, with it, the habits of a lifetime; and he 
hoped that by spending tranquil days and nights on 
the farm, and by rolling 'round in a motor like a fat 
and prosperous citizen, he might compromise with 
an unrelenting foe. Then suddenly there came a bolt 
from the blue, a harsh threat of impending disaster, 
a tremendous struggle for the life that was so useful 
and so dear. 



CHAPTER VIII 
A CRISIS PAST 

ON June 5th, 1906, 1 had an attack of peritonitis, 
during which I discovered a hard nodular mass 
in my left iliac fossa. Taken with my other symptoms, 
at my age (fifty -five), this indicated with great prob- 
ability a cancerous growth involving the sigmoid 
flexure, no final and conclusive proof of the presence 
of internal cancer being at this date known to the 
profession. On June 17th I left Philadelphia (with 
Letty and Dr. A. C. Wood) for Rochester, Minne- 
sota, where we arrived June 19th. On June 21st I 
was operated on by Dr. William J. Mayo. Resection 
of seven inches of the sigmoid, with end-to-end anas- 
tomosis, was done. The operation was severe and 
prolonged. Dr. Mayo thought the mass was can- 
cerous until the pathologist's report showed that it 
was a congenital diverticulum, containing an enter- 
olith which had set up ulceration, and was sur- 
rounded by a mass of inflammatory exudate, making 
the lump thought to be malignant. The ulceration 
had already caused perforation of the bowel, which 
had given me the attack of peritonitis." 

This is Dr. White's succinct account of an expe- 
rience which embraced the utmost limits of appre- 



140 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

hension and relief. He had no doubt that the growth 
was a malignant one. The physicians who examined 
him were equally sure of it, and made little effort to 
deceive a man who absolutely refused to deceive 
himself. He put his affairs in order with his cus- 
tomary precision. There were many friends eager to 
accompany him to Rochester; but he declined all 
companionship save that of his wife and of Dr. Alfred 
C. Wood, who had been for years his assistant in 
the University Hospital, and for whom he enter- 
tained the strong regard which comes with the shar- 
ing of work, and care, and responsibility. He knew 
Dr. Wood's skill as a surgeon; he knew his deep 
unspoken affection; and he knew the quality of his 
intercourse, the smooth, silent, wise watchfulness, 
which would give all the help that was needed, and 
never fret the nerves of a man who believed he was 
travelling to receive his death-warrant. As soon as an 
hour was fixed for the operation, telegrams were sent 
to Philadelphia, and Dr. Martin, Dr. Frazier, and 
Dr. Stengel started at once for Rochester. Treves 
had been most anxious to be present, but it was, of 
course, impossible to await his coming. 

There was one intervening day, June 20th, and 
Dr. White filled it up, characteristically enough, by 
watching the two great brother surgeons operate. 
The utmost interest was taken in his own case, the 
utmost kindness and consideration were shown him. 



A CRISIS PAST 141 

When the report revealed the non-malignant char- 
acter of the growth, Dr. William Mayo hastened to 
the bedside of his patient, who was perilously weak, 
and somewhat disinclined to living. "Well, you're 
all right," he said gladly. 

"Well, you're a good liar," replied Dr. White. 
"I've been there myself, and I know." 

Dr. Mayo sat down, and took the sick man's hand. 
"You don't know everything," he said. "It is like 
this. A bagful of black beans and one white one. 
You 've pulled out the white bean. Now get well." 

Meanwhile, in far-off Philadelphia, Dr. White's 
secretary, Miss Ivens, waited all that long June day 
in his office on Rittenhouse Square for news which 
she could transmit to his anxious friends. She was as 
earnestly and as loyally devoted to him as any 
friend he had, her concern was as deep, her heart as 
heavy. At ten o'clock in the morning she said to me, 
"Come back at four. We should have word by then." 
At four I went. She opened the door. Her eyes were 
shining, her face transfigured with joy. Silently she 
handed me the telegram, and, half-dazed by the 
sudden lifting of fear, I read the message which 
brought better news than any one had ever dared 
to hope. 

The convalescence was slow, and endangered by 
serious complications. For a whole month Dr. White 
was permitted to remain in the hospital, — an un- 



142 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

> — .. 
heard-of indulgence when so many patients were 

waiting for admission. For ten days Dr. Wood stayed 
by his side. He established the friendliest relations 
with Sister Mary Joseph and her assistant nuns; and, 
after his faithful fashion, he never forgot her kind- 
ness. When he reached Rome the following Novem- 
ber, he sent her a signed photograph of Pope Pius 
the Tenth, and obtained for her and for her sister- 
hood the Papal blessing; in return for which she 
wrote him fervent thanks, promised him fervent pray- 
ers, and gave him unreservedly the "united love" of 
the community. 

To Dr. Mayo he made the only return in his power. 
His friendship for both the brothers, his admiration 
and gratitude, found expression in a codicil in his 
will, bequeathing to them the sum of $10,000. He 
wrote them frankly of this bequest, and they an- 
swered just as frankly, saying they always had bet- 
ter luck than they deserved, and that, while they 
were willing to wait many long years for the money, 
it would be useful to the hospital when it came. 

On July 3d, thirteen days after the operation, 
came the first faint scrawl in Dr. White's hand- 
writing to Thomas Robins. "I ought to have had 
cancer," he wrote. " Mayo says it was one hundred 
to one chances against me, and that he hardly 
thought any alternative worth considering. But my 
dumb luck stuck to me." On July 12th he wrote 



A CRISIS PAST 143 

again, this time quite legibly, and in his old banter- 
ing strain. He has escaped all the pitfalls spread to 
catch his tottering steps. He has been promoted to 
the dignity of bathing himself, and of brushing his 
own teeth. The teeth he finds unchanged; but his 
arms and legs are so shrunken, they are not worth 
washing. He can hardly see them with the naked 
eye. For fifteen months he had been treated for a 
heart disease that did not exist. For fifteen months 
the real nature of his malady had never been sus- 
pected. For fifteen months he had blindly accepted 
the verdict of his doctors. He offers the excuse that 
he was the patient, and that it was not his business 
to find out what was the matter with himself; but he 
is candid enough to admit that he was a bit "stupid" 
never to have made a guess at the truth. 

On the 18th of July he left Rochester, and on the 
20th a little group of happy friends and relatives 
waited for the arrival of his train in Philadelphia. 
Thin, worn, but smiling and as perverse as ever, the 
convalescent jeered at the rolling chair which had 
been drawn close to the car, refused the station lift, 
walked proudly, though not very firmly, down the 
stairs, and into the waiting motor. He was taken at 
once to the house of his cousin, Mr. S. S. White, 
at Narberth, and remained there, gaining a pound a 
week, until he sailed for England about the first of 
August. There existed between Dr. White and this 



144 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

cousin a warm and inextinguishable friendship which 
dated from early boyhood, and which had that foun- 
dation upon which Robert Louis Stevenson says 
most friendships are built, — the memory of careless, 
happy hours, of mutual jests, of little experiences, 
comical or exasperating, which they had shared for 
years. Their marriage with two sisters deepened the 
bond between them. Dr. White's summer diaries 
were really letters, sent home in batches, meant 
chiefly for his cousins and brothers; and full of jokes, 
and phrases, and allusions, to which only his chosen 
readers held the key. 

From absent friends came hosts of loving, anxious 
letters. John Sargent wrote his deep concern and his 
profound relief. Henry James sent warm-hearted 
messages to his "dear and gallant friend," and longed 
to "scuffle" with Mrs. White for the privilege of 
holding his hand. Treves was beside himself with 
delight at the happy ending of so many sorrowful 
hours. Lord Lister wrote a sad little note, confessing 
his own heavy infirmities, while congratulating Dr. 
White on his marvellous restoration to health. Dr. 
Horace Howard Furness complimented the conva- 
lescent upon his wisdom in foregoing for a time "the 
problematic joys" of another world. "Had I my 
will," he wrote affectionately, "every step in your 
life should be strewed with flowers. But are not 
transitory, fading flowers far better replaced by the 



A CRISIS PAST 145 

countless blessings invoked upon your head from 
lips where gratitude will last as long as life? What 
are the roses of an hour compared with the roses of 
health that you have made to bloom! Ah, my boy, 
you are to be envied. 

"As our St. Agnes told you, I intended to go at 
once and look after you, although my special pro- 
ficiency does not, as you are aware, meet your case. 
But I am timid about calling on my friends. It is 
such a horrid bore to talk to a deaf man. When 
Nature sends deafness, it is the good dame's way of 
saying to the victim, 'do you go into the corner and 
hold your tongue, — conversation is not for such as 
you.' I accept her decree, and obey." 

It was natural that the ocean voyage this fateful 
summer should have seemed to Dr. White the sweet- 
est he had ever known. The lightness of heart which 
comes with the departure of pain and the daily in- 
crease of strength was intensified by the thought that 
life was his to hold; that the world, with its dear 
familiar things, its perpetual menace and its shining 
possibilities, was his to conquer and enjoy. He had 
been ready to meet the "great adventure" with an 
unshrinking front; but his desire to live was vigorous 
and unabashed. The sea, the salt breeze, and the 
sparkling sun sent the blood dancing through his 
veins. The shores of England beckoned invitingly. 
Loving friends awaited his arrival. Aberdeen, where 



146 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

he was to receive the degree of LL.D. was his main 
objective; but there was time to spare for a run through 
Wales, a visit to Morgan Hall, London, and the 
English Lakes. He had thought to make things 
easier by sending over his motor and his faithful 
chauffeur, Ell wood; and the sight of them on the 
Liverpool docks was pleasantly reassuring. Later on 
he learned that he had secured for himself three 
months of care and vexation; but this knowledge 
was mercifully hidden in those first smooth, tranquil 
days. 

From Henry James came a long letter, full of ad- 
miration, or consternation (it is hard to tell which), 
at the meteor-like velocity with which the conva- 
lescent was scouring through Wales. "The whole 
picture of your proceedings and adventures," he 
wrote, "affects me as nothing else does. I sit here 
driving my poor dull pen, and striking my damp 
ineffectual matches, while you bound from continent 
to continent, from ocean to mountain, from hospital 
to motor, from triumph to triumph, in a manner that 
attests the exuberance, not to say the arrogance, of 
your vitality. Truly you live a Life, and the mere 
side-wind of it, in the form of a Bettws-y-Coed (I do 
love to write that name) breeze, makes me sit up. 
I am, in fact, sitting up till one a.m. to tell you how 
I rejoice in your grand recovery, in your brave activ- 
ity, in everything that is yours." 



A CRISIS PAST 147 

Dr. White's appreciation of the Welsh scenery 
found expression in a renewed zeal for photography. 
Since the far-off days on the Hassler he had practised 
this difficult art with singular lack of success. He 
sent me once some photographs of his own taking, 
and I could only say it was a severe blow to me to 
know that he could do anything so badly. Still, as he 
repeatedly pointed out, there was always a picture 
of some sort to show as a result of his endeavours, 
while Mrs. White occasionally drew a blank. "The 
workings of the female mind are truly wonderful," he 
observes with conscious superiority. "After eighteen 
years of kodaking, Letty is just as likely as not to 
put the lens against her stomach, and try and pho- 
tograph with the other end." 

It was inevitable that there should have been some 
disappointments to mar the glory of this triumphant 
summer. The motor, which behaved so irreproach- 
ably in the start, grew more and more recalcitrant 
as the weeks went by, and required a great deal of 
tinkering at the least convenient times, and in the 
least commodious localities. The reports from the 
farm were exasperating, — plumbers, plasterers, gar- 
deners, and workmen generally, conspiring, after 
their wont, to make a mess of their respective jobs. 
"No bad news except about the farm, which I wish 
were in Hell," is a typical entry in the diary. It was 
in this first year of ownership that Dr. Martin chris- 



148 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

tened the place, "Oh, Hell!" and as "Oh, Hell!" it 
is casually and repeatedly alluded to. Mrs. White 
rebelled against this endearing epithet, explaining 
tersely that it was not a name which she could have 
engraved upon her stationery; so Mr. Robins re- 
placed it with the pastoral and irreproachable appel- 
lative, "Cherry Knoll Farm." 

More serious matters of concern to Dr. White 
were Abbey's ill-health (he had been an invalid for 
five months), and his own lack of endurance. Fatigue, 
heat, worry of any kind, told on him as they had 
never told before; and, in the first flush of convales- 
cence, he was apt to forget that he had ever been ill. 
There were nights rendered sleepless by over-exertion, 
and there were homesick days when he comforted 
himself by watching Mrs. White's recovered bloom 
and unalloyed content. "Letty's old insomnia still 
troubles her before 10 p.m. and after 8 a.m.," he 
writes from Keswick; "but for the intervening ten 
hours she is dead to the world. She is having a tre- 
mendous flirtation with a Canadian gentleman, a 
little my senior, and spends most of her waking 
hours (when they are not meal hours) talking to 
him." 

It would have been the part of wisdom (even mod- 
erate wisdom) to have saved up strength for the 
fatiguing days in Scotland; but this was not Dr. 
White's way. Treves had written from the royal 



A CRISIS PAST 149 

yacht, then anchored at Christiania, claiming his 
friends as his guests while they were in Aberdeen. 
He was not having a really good time on that yacht. 
The daily excursions in company with one king, two 
queens, and a princess, were less merry than the old 
picnics at Scilly. "I miss the bathing clothes hung 
out to dry," he wrote. "There is no golf, but a big 
dinner of some sort every night, which I could do 
without. The only thing you would enjoy is the 
service of prayer and praise every Sabbath morn." 

Two things weighed upon Dr. White's soul as he 
motored to Aberdeen. He would be compelled to 
make a speech (a short one, happily) in the name of 
all the American universities; and he would be com- 
pelled to wear, when he received his degree, a par- 
ticularly brilliant gown of scarlet and pale blue. He 
wondered if it would be as gorgeous as the Cambridge 
gown in which Dr. Furness looked on Commence- 
ment days like "a jolly old bird of paradise"; and 
he found to his dismay that it was more determinedly 
picturesque, being topped by a rakish black velvet 

cap, hard to adjust, and "d d unbecoming" when 

adjusted. The speech, however, was a great success, 
owing largely to the fact that the Reverend William 
Smith, first Provost of the University of Pennsyl- 
vania, had been an Aberdeen man, born within a 
mile of the town, baptized in the old Aberdeenshire 
kirk, and educated at the University. The story of 



150 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

this highly belligerent and seditious Scotchman, 
who, when clapped into a Philadelphia jail, con- 
tinued to instruct his students in these incommo- 
dious quarters, and turned the peaceful prison into 
Bedlam, was hailed with delight by his townsmen. 
They had forgotten all about him for more than a 
hundred years, and were correspondingly pleased to 
be reminded of his tumultuous and triumphant 
career. 

The Aberdeen celebrations lasted three days, — 
three whole days of meetings, and speeches, and for- 
mal openings of new buildings, and processions, and 
luncheons, and "banquets." It was a terrible pro- 
gramme for a convalescent who had been ordered 
quiet and rest; but, once embarked upon it, there 
seemed no avenue of escape. The Lord Provost of 
the University gave one banquet, the Lord Chancel- 
lor, a second. At the first, Dr. White sat between a 
German professor and an ex-Lord Provost, and had 
as much in common with his neighbours as he might 
have had with a "cigar-store Indian." At the second, 
he was too tired and ill for conversation. As the 
friend and guest of the Lord Rector, he was bidden 
to the royal luncheon, the only foreigner so honoured; 
and he walked in his cap and gown through the 
streets of Aberdeen to the Town Hall, in company 
with other gentlemen equally distinguished and 
equally bedizened, while the crowd stared its fill, 



A CRISIS PAST 151 

and the Gordon Highlanders held back adventurous 
children. "It was a great day," he wrote, "for me 
and the King." 

It was even greater than his simple spirit had con- 
ceived. English papers gravely recorded the favour 
shown him, and Philadelphia papers repeated the 
news a trifle more emphatically. Friends applauded 
or jeered, according to their frame of mind. Henry 
James, with an affectation of profound humility, 
wrote, asking for the privilege of an interview. 

"I shall not expect to do anything but come up to 
London to lunch with you on some day that I now 
appeal to you very kindly (or graciously, as they 
say of your present sort) to appoint. I naturally 
yearn over you, with your rise in the social scale, 
more even than usual; and it is, in short, indispen- 
sable that I shall at least be able for the brief here- 
after of my days to swagger about having lunched 
with you. Don't deprive me of this possibly sole 
consolation of my inferiority. Make me some simple 
sign of the duration of your days in London, and I 
will come for as many hours as may be, and spend 
them all as near you as one may now approach. 
Would n't it be some day next week? I am supposing 
that this will meet you in London. Heaven send it 
find you intermitting a little, in the interest of rest, 
the passion and pride of your career." 

It was about this time that Dr. White came slowly 



152 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

and sadly to the conclusion that he was not strong 
enough to return to Philadelphia, and take up his 
lectures in the winter. He had tried to bully Nature, 
and had consistently refused her all concessions. 
Now he found that the "good dame" — to use 
Dr. Furness' too partial epithet — was more than a 
match for him. "I am still weak and nervous," he 
wrote to Thomas Robins; "and while I can never 
under any circumstances avoid worrying about 
something, I'm sure I'd have more to trouble me if 
I came home and went to work. I'm only part of a 
man yet, and had, I suppose, better play until I can 
stand at least the mild knocks of life." 

His play would have bowled over Hercules. He 
motored on, on, on, seeing everything that was to 
be seen, hustling through Scotland, England, and the 
beautiful towns of southern France, in a series of 
one night stands. If by good luck a stormy day gave 
him a chance to loaf and invite his soul, he wrote 
reams of diary, dozens of letters, made up accounts, 
and fatigued himself as thoroughly as if he had gone 
on some nerve-racking expedition. He was always 
a punctilious correspondent, "very scrupulous and 
energetic" (his own words) in answering his friends' 
letters, and very prompt and patient "even when I 
don't care a damn for the answeree." It was doubtful 
wisdom. Sargent used to point out to him that leav- 
ing letters unanswered saves half a man's life, and 



A CRISIS PAST 153 

leaving them unread saves the other half. As for the 
thousand and forty-seven picture postcards which 
he sent home in less than four months, that riotous 
excess, that "passionate prodigality," would have 
been possible to no other traveller in Christendom. 

Monte Carlo left him cold. He had no love for gam- 
bling, and no taste for the elaborately meretricious. 
"I think I could be almost as wicked as anybody 
here without half trying," is his highly characteristic 
comment. The only person who interested him was 
"an elderly, respectable, motherly looking lady, who 
sat by the dealer at trente-et-quarante, and who got 
ten thousand francs out of the bank while we were 
watching her." The only thing which really pleased 
him was the profound quiet of his rooms. Southern 
France he had found to be little less noisy than Italy, 
and to have the same reprehensible habit of begin- 
ning life early in the day. At Brignoles he makes this 
entry in his diary: 

"October 29th. 6.15 a.m.: If it had not been for a 
dozen musicians under our windows, one horse, two 
roosters, three dogs, four cats, a cook in a kitchen, a 
scullion in a courtyard, and a carbuncle on my neck, 
I 'd have slept very well last night. Letty did anyway. 
Everybody in Brignoles — except Letty — is now up 
and making some kind of a noise. I wish I had a 
horn and a drum. I feel out of it." 

With his usual amazing good luck, he had reached 



154 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

Rome, and was actually in St. Peter's, when the 
bomb was exploded on November 18th. He was not 
a church-goer, and seldom attended a service. Yet 
he did hear Mass that day, did linger to see the 
great relics exposed in the logge, and did stroll about 
afterwards long enough to be present when the out- 
rage occurred. The bomb exploded near the beautiful 
tomb of Clement the Thirteenth. There was a rend- 
ing noise and a column of black smoke. Most of the 
people left in the Cathedral ran to the doors. A few, 
including the Whites, ran to the smoke. They were 
so swift that Dr. White was able to gather up a 
handful of nails and scraps of iron before the guards 
appeared, and drove back the now clamorous and 
excited mob. It was a remarkable experience. Phil- 
adelphia newspapers took due notice of it; and one 
journal, permitting itself a pardonable latitude in the 
matter of detail, reported that Dr. White was travel- 
ling through Russia, when a bomb flung by a nihilist 
in the streets of St. Petersburg exploded at his feet. 

The trip to Egypt, so long in abeyance, was now 
settled upon. Of all Dr. White's friends, Henry James 
alone opposed it. He had heard vague rumours of 
"unrest," of "heavings" beneath the surface. He 
had been informed by the usual "good authority" 
that it was not a safe country for a "delicate fe- 
male" to enter. "You, William," he wrote, "are not 
a female, and your delicacy is a thing of the past, 



A CRISIS PAST 155 

when I have known you really quite indelicate; but I 
kind of fidget over Letitia, and am hoping that, in 
the eastward current, as you have now sometime 
been, you are not without full information and re- 
assurance on this general head. If you've never 
thought of the matter at all, think of it now, — 
always for Letitia, since I don't care so much what 
becomes of you. I give you, of course, my little 
chatter for what it is worth, and can but take for 
granted that you are not going it blind, but know 
where you are, and what you are doing. You are not 
irresponsible infants, and won't behave as such. 
Still, for the last word, don't, William, drag the 
delicate Letitia! And do, Letitia, wrestle with the 
reckless William!" 

It may be imagined how much weight this coun- 
sel had with either of the enterprising tourists. Dr. 
White admitted that it gave the Egyptian trip "a 
faint — a very faint — spice of adventure," which 
was strengthened when a British soldier told him in 
Cairo what precautions for safety had been taken. 
Mrs. White probably never thought of the matter 
again. The nostalgia which lay in wait for the doc- 
tor's unoccupied moments (they were few) had 
attacked him in Italy, — especially on the days of 
the Penn-Cornell and Army-Navy games, when he 
did not know whether to give thanks or to curse, 
and so felt all the bitterness of exile. The novelty of 



156 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

Egypt was expected to heal these sick dreams of 
home. His enthusiasm for fresh fields of travel was 
as keen as in his youthful days, his curiosity was as 
insatiable. He never knew — and to some of us it 
would be a heavy loss — the exquisite and unworthy 
pleasures of the idle tourist, who is content to be a 
part of his strange surroundings, and who refuses to 
be hounded into sight-seeing. The joy of leaving 
Yarrow un visited was never his to tell. 

That he and Mrs. White should have climbed the 
Great Pyramid, and have crawled into its burial 
chamber, was inevitable. "I would n't have missed 
entering if I'd have had to wriggle in on my belly," 
he wrote emphatically. That, with the slow current 
of the Nile inviting him to repose, he should have 
made every excursion and visited every ruin, was 
equally a matter of course. But when it came to the 
dubious delight of riding on a camel fifteen, eighteen, 
and twenty miles a day, his enjoyment is harder to 
analyze. Yet there were many amusing experiences 
which he would have missed had he been a shade 
less energetic, notably a Soudanese wedding at 
Wady Haifa, where he figured as a distinguished 
guest. The bride's dowry consisted of two nose-rings, 
a brass anklet, and a six-inch fringe of glass beads. 
The groom possessed a goat-skin water bag and a 
bone-handled dagger. With this simple and sufficient 
equipment, free from the tyranny of things, from 



A CRISIS PAST 157 

the burden of rubbish which we carry to our graves, 
the young couple faced an unencumbered and con- 
tented future. There was plenty of dancing, which 
costs nothing; and Dr. White treated the donkey boys 
to all the Arabic beer which they could drink, with 
results that would have scandalized our peremptory 
prohibitionists. 

On the whole, Egypt was beneficent to the inva- 
lid. A carbuncle and poisoned flea-bites marred his 
pleasure in Cairo (" I just have to keep out of the 
charming and attractive little cesspools and sewers 
which they call streets," he wrote regretfully); but 
the life-giving air of the Nile could not fail to in- 
vigorate him. He had for the East as strong a sym- 
pathy as was possible for a man to whom one of its 
great inspirations was a dead letter, a blank leaf in 
the book of fate. His careless summary of Mahomet 
as "an epileptic lunatic" (and this after visiting the 
mosque el Azhar with its library and students), marks 
the barrier which divided him from a high tide of 
human emotions, and blocked his historic perspective. 
Epileptic lunatics have, indeed, started religious move- 
ments; but these have perished with their founders. 
They have made history; but only its brief and dol- 
orous records. No epileptic lunatic has ever been a 
nation-builder, a controlling influence in the world's 
life, a potent force and a spiritual solace to millions 
of men through the passing of the centuries. 



158 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

On the 24th of January the Whites sailed from 
Alexandria, and on the 11th of February they reached 
Philadelphia. Three hundred University students 
were lined up at the Broad Street Station, singing 
"Hail, Pennsylvania!" as the train pulled in. When 
they caught sight of the familiar gray head, the 
broad shoulders and the broader smile, they cheered 
vociferously, and formed themselves into a guard 
of honour to escort the wanderer home. Many wel- 
coming friends were also present, and from all over 
the country came letters and telegrams of congratu- 
lation. Dr. Furness, then ill at Wallingford, was com- 
pelled to write the loving words he would have liked 
to speak. 

My dear, dear White: 

Heartiest of all hearty welcomes to your home. 
You never wrote a line more delightful to your 
friends than "I am as well as ever again." 

I have been counting upon nothing with more 
eagerness than upon the pleasure of greeting you on 
Wednesday at The Triplets; but you may possibly 
have heard it remarked that man proposes but God 
disposes. I have been completely tied up by the re- 
sults of overwork, complicated with grippe; and my 
physician will not listen to my going out in the night 
air; so I must, perforce, forego The Triplets next 
Wednesday. 



A CRISIS PAST 159 

Who shall say that your restoration to health be 
not due to the prayers of our dear friend, St. Agnes? 
'Tis a certain fact, if fervour spells efficacy. 

Do let me send my sincere congratulations to that 
happy woman, your wife, and believe me, 
Yours affectionately 

Horace Howard Furness 

There were receptions and public dinners. There 
were many speeches called for, and a few made. Dr. 
White was never enamoured of speech-making. He 
could but say out of the fulness of his heart that, of 
all sights in the world, the best and dearest to him 
were the faces of his friends, and the dear familiar 
shabbiness of Rittenhouse Square. 



CHAPTER IX 
FOUR BUSY YEARS 

IF Dr. White had rashly dreamed that the sur- 
render of his practice would mean for him a life 
of leisure and tranquillity, he was destined to be 
rudely undeceived. Perhaps leisure was as alien to 
his habits as tranquillity was alien to his disposition. 
Certain it is that work found him out wherever he 
went, and that the "rest," of which he was wont to 
talk a little vaguely, formed no part of his earthly 
experience. Three months after his return to Phila- 
delphia, he was offered, and accepted, the post of 
Advisory Surgeon to the Pennsylvania Railroad 
Company. The position was a new one, and repre- 
sented a needed consolidation. The doctor was given 
supervision and absolute control of the medical 
department of the great corporation which left no 
part of its business to chance, and which for many, 
many years, down to the spring of 1918, enjoyed the 
proud distinction of being the best-run railroad in 
the world. The Company's hospitals in the mining 
regions were put under the Advisory Surgeon's care. 
He was responsible for their management, equipment, 
and staff. He was consulted in the appointment of 
their physicians, and he gave personal supervision 




^ 



C€>1^£l 



^.&s-e^-r 



/&&£^£* 



FOUR BUSY YEARS 161 

when serious surgery was required. The work in no 
way interfered with his University lectures; but it 
insured a brand-new assortment of responsibilities, 
and absorbed many hours of an already well-filled 
life. 

This being the case, there was no apparent need 
for his associates to urge upon him fresh fields of 
labour. Treves, who was forever driven by the demon 
of print, wrote books about every place he visited, 
and counselled Dr. White to follow in his footsteps. 
He wanted him to write mild antiquarian papers on 
English villages and manor houses. Dr. Weir Mitchell, 
who could do anything he put his hand to, laughed 
at the scruples of a man who pleaded that the field 
of letters was not his bailiwick, and that perhaps it 
was as well to keep out of it. "You are a blessed old 
humbug," he wrote breezily, "to talk about the use 
of language. You know that few men have a better 
control of English. You have used your powers but 
little, and needlessly underrate an unusual capacity." 
Thomas Robins, with a limitless confidence in his 
friend's endowments, proposed that he should write 
a novel, and the suggestion was repeated to Henry 
James, who said briefly and enigmatically, "Why 
not?" "I fancy," commented the doctor, "that he 
knows why not as well as I do." 

All this time there was much work to be done at 
the University, there were papers for medical journals 



163 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

encroaching upon every spare hour, there were the 
new and unloved football rules to be assimilated and 
made the best of, and the Army and Navy games to 
be kept in good running order. There was also the 
supremely important business of getting well, which 
never received the attention it deserved. Dr. White 
had fondly hoped that the summer of 1907 would 
find him tramping through the Engadine, and climb- 
ing mountains with his old ardour and endurance. 
He was profoundly disappointed when Dr. Osier 
pronounced him to be still unfit for these strenuous 
joys. No hard walks, no climbs, no carrying of knap- 
sacks (why, in Heaven's name, should any man not 
compelled to carry a knapsack solicit the privilege!), 
was Osier's verdict; and so much danger did he appre- 
hend from undue fatigue that he wrote twice to his way- 
ward patient, entreating him to be cautious. "Don't 
rush!" he pleaded. "Don't put any extra strain upon 
your heart!" "Don't forget that you have no longer 
the ostrich-like digestion of twenty-five years ago!" 
Wise counsel which no friendly feeling could make 
welcome. "I wish I hadn't asked him to examine 
me," said Dr. White dejectedly. 

Yet there were attractions in England which 
might well have outweighed the pleasure of moun- 
tain climbing. Friends were there to welcome him. 
Sargent, whom he had not seen for nearly two years, 
was in London this season, dallying with the fond 



FOUR BUSY YEARS 163 

illusion that he was about to give up portrait-paint- 
ing, and answering all remonstrances with the strong 
statement, "I hate doing pawtreets." Henry James 
was there also, aghast as usual at Dr. White's "per- 
verse and incalculable rhythms"; and Treves, who 
had been so loaded with honours in the past twelve 
months that his back was nigh to breaking. To him 
and to Sir Francis Laking, the King's second surgeon, 
had been granted, in recognition of their "great skill 
and unremitting attention," the supreme dignity of 
bearing a golden lion on their arms. Such a thing, it 
was said, had never been known since the days of 
James the First, when that disconcertingly demo- 
cratic monarch had permitted his apothecary, Gideon 
Delaune, to bear on his arms (if he had any) a golden 
lion passant on a red field. A more substantial mark 
of favour was the beautiful "Thatched House Lodge," 
in Richmond Park, which King Edward assigned to 
Treves as a residence. In its charming grounds stood, 
and still stands, the original "Thatched House," 
decorated by Angelica Kauffmann, and preserved 
with admirable care. It was a priceless boon to a 
man who had to be near London, yet hated to live 
in it, who said — and believed — that the air of big 
cities was "poisonous," and who loved the country 
with a Briton's hardy and tenacious affection. 

To prosper gracefully cannot, in the nature of 
things, be impossible; but it is an art which has yet 



164 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

to be demonstrated. Sir Frederick would have been 
more or less than human if his brilliant successes had 
left no mark upon him. Dr. White, who was heart- 
ily American, and, in his own fashion, democratic 
(no two men are democratic along the same lines), 
thought that his friend, when he went to visit him in 
Dorsetshire, had grown a trifle superfine. Treves was 
ready enough to sigh over the old unregenerate days, 
but he would do nothing to compromise his present 
exalted position. He had become strangely fastidi- 
ous about the clothes he wore to church and garden 
parties; he regarded bank holidays very much as a 
conservative Boston gentleman might regard a re- 
union of the "Elks"; he did not like to see his guest 
bicycling hatless over the country "like a clerk," or 
breaking eggs into a glass, — having never listened 
to Dr. Weir Mitchell's powerful and pleasing argu- 
ments in favour of that cleanly custom. It took the 
clear understanding and kindly offices of Lady Treves 
and Mrs. White to keep their distinguished husbands 
in smooth running order. 

Dorsetshire had many attractions. Thomas Hardy 
was a near neighbour, and a friendly one. The bare 
simplicity of his house amazed Dr. White, who all 
his life was powerless to resist possessions; but two 
"nice cats" softened its austerity, and lent to the 
great novelist and his guests the privilege of their 
suave and gentle company. 



FOUR BUSY YEARS 165 

Other acquaintances, less famous but equally 
agreeable, did the honour of the countryside; and one 
clever Englishwoman endeared herself for life to the 
highly receptive American by telling him the story 
of an ancient village dame who, when ill, said she 
wished she were "in Beelzebub's bosom." "You 
mean," corrected the startled parson, "in Abraham's 
bosom." "Ah!" sighed the unconcerned patient, "if 
you'd been a lone widow as long as I be, you'd not 
care 'oose bosom it was." 

Abbey was devoting his whole summer to the 
decorations for the Capitol at Harrisburg, and Dr. 
White, more confident than ever that these virile 
and deeply coloured canvases would be "the saving 
of that monument of graft," wrote a long account of 
them, and sent it home to be printed in the Phila- 
delphia papers. The symbolism of the designs pleased 
him no less than the execution, because it was, for 
the most part, of that uncomplicated order which 
conveys its meaning instantly to the eye of the spec- 
tator. Symbols which require little guide-books to 
explain them are remote from the simplicity of dec- 
orative art. What interests us is, not what the 
decorator meant, but what he did; not what was in 
his mind, but what was in his finger-tips; not how 
deeply he felt the subtleties of his subject, but how 
successfully he mastered the difficulties of his craft. 
Dr. White's timely praise had the effect of sharp- 



166 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

ening public curiosity, already much concerned over 
the Capitol decorations. The "Philadelphia In- 
quirer" embellished his paper with a somewhat 
rakish picture of the writer, felicitously inscribed: 
"Rev. J. William White." "This," wrote the doc- 
tor to Thomas Robins, "is a late recognition of my 
piety and worth. It has led to sarcastic letters from 
friends like Effingham Morris, to whom I have re- 
plied in a truly Christian spirit of forgiveness." 

The hours spent in Abbey's studio were to Dr. 
White a never failing source of interest. He was ready 
to pose as a model whenever he was wanted. He liked, 
in the mornings, to watch the artist sketching and 
grouping his figures ; and, at night, to see the magnified 
sketches thrown by means of lantern slides on the 
great canvases stretched for their reception. "Then 
the outlines and memoranda of the lights and shad- 
ows, etc., are rapidly gone over, and avast deal of labour 
is saved. In an hour, William Penn and four Indians 
were placed on the canvas, and roughly sketched in." 

Abbey confided to his friend that he thought sev- 
eral additional panels were needed to complete his 
designs for the "Founding of Pennsylvania." These 
panels formed no part of his original conception of 
the subject, or of his original bargain with a board 
which might be reasonably reluctant to pay for work 
it had not ordered. The more he considered them, 
however, the more essential they seemed to his pur- 



FOUR BUSY YEARS 167 

pose; so, like the true artist that he was, he wrote to 
his friend in December, 1908, bidding him ask space 
for the panels, and authorizing him to offer them 
without payment. This Dr. White did, and the offer 
was briskly accepted. Politicians may have mar- 
velled a little at such a method of doing business, but 
they found no cause for complaint. 

Dr. Charles Penrose, who had never abandoned 
the pleasures of the hunt, met with one of its penal- 
ties in the autumn of 1907, when he was camping in 
the mountains of northwestern Montana. A she bear, 
whose cub he had shot, attacked him so fiercely that 
he was badly torn before he could despatch the en- 
raged animal. He maintained, as became a huntsman, 
that the bear was within her rights, and that he had 
no kick coming; but the justness of this point of 
view, while soothing to his mind and salutary to his 
soul, left his body in a terrible condition. He was 
taken to the Mayo Hospital in Rochester as soon as 
he could bear the journey, and brought home when 
partly convalescent. Dr. White was even then much 
concerned over his condition. "Charley Penrose is 
improving," he wrote Thomas Robins; "but he has 
a wrist which gives me a good deal of anxiety. Mar- 
tin is attending him, and I am in consultation. Our 
differences of opinion (which are many) are marked by 
vituperation and prof anity, — Charley finding fault 
indiscriminately with both of us." 



168 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

By this time the farm was in fair running order. 
Mrs. Morton's herculean efforts had made the house 
habitable and attractive, and the workmen were be- 
ing driven one by one from the domain they had so 
long misruled. Dr. White's conception of a pastoral 
life was to spend hours every day in the saddle, rid- 
ing with Mrs. White in the morning, and alone in 
the afternoon, and fatiguing himself as thoroughly 
as if he had been carrying a knapsack over a Swiss 
pass. His friends, especially those who lived in 
Europe, thought of him as an American "Farmer 
John," inspecting his crops and his poultry, or con- 
templating from his own rooftree those aspects of 
nature which were spoken of in Hannah More's day 
as "moral scenery." Osier and Treves and Abbey vig- 
orously applauded this serene absorption. Sargent, 
who cared nothing for moral scenery, and who was 
beset by groundless alarms lest bucolic pleasures 
should wean his friend from their old haunts, wrote 
him warningly to stop "watching mangel-wurzels, 
and listening to black Leghorns and Plymouth 
Rocks." "These, I am aware, are the joys of the 
landed proprietor; but let them not take exclusive 
possession of your heart. They beget a terrible re- 
spectability, and an awful pride. And when they 
have seared your soul, you will suddenly find that 
you don't care a damn for mangel-wurzels after all." 

Never in his correspondence with Dr. White did 



FOUR BUSY YEARS 169 

Sargent consent to sully his pen by writing the word 
"damn." He always stencilled it in large letters, red 
or black as the fancy seized him. When red, it took 
on a lurid significance. When black, it had an im- 
pressive solemnity, reminding the reader of that 
clergyman whom Thomas Fuller commended, inas- 
much as "he could pronounce the word damn with 
such emphasis as left a doleful echo in the hearer's 
mind a long time after." 

Henry James, who could never think of Dr. 
White except in violent action, and who knew that 
riding had for the time supplanted all other athletic 
exercises, pictured him as an Arab or a Tartar, for- 
ever astride of his beast, "leading a free quadrupedal 
life, erect and nimble in the midst of the browsing 
herds. ... It all sounds delightfully pastoral to one 
whose 'stable' consists of the go-cart in which the 
gardener brings up (from the station) the luggage of 
visitors who advance successfully to the stage of 
that question of transport; and whose outhouses are 
the shed under which my henchman 'attends to the 
boots ' of those confronted by the subsequent phase of 
early matutinal departure" (is that James or John- 
son?). "All of which means that I do seem to read into 
your rich record the happiest evidences of health as 
well as of wealth, and that you take my breath away." 

He took the breath away from friends less con- 
templative and less stationary than Mr. James. 



170 J, WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

Even those who knew him best, and who shared his 
tastes and amusements, were staggered by the im- 
petuosity of a man whom years could not sober, or 
illness daunt. "I weigh a hundred and seventy 
pounds," he wrote to Thomas Robins in June, 1908. 
"I'm in good hard condition. I've spent the last 
days in the hay fields with pitchfork and rake, and 
have done a man's work. I'm keeping three saddle 
horses exercised. I've jumped four feet, six inches, 
and, if you don't believe it, I 've a photograph taken 
by Alan Wilson at the time. I have a horse that 
whirls and rears at automobiles, and I don't care a 
damn. So my nerves must be in as good shape as my 
muscles. I've had one fall (jumping), and tore some 
of my probably large assortment of internal ab- 
dominal adhesions. I was under the weather for 
three days, but was on horseback and jumping again 
on the fourth. It could not have been serious." 

All this meant that Dr. White had unalterably 
resolved to fling prudence to the winds, and escape 
in August to Switzerland. It was not only the zest 
for tramping, and climbing, and wearing himself out, 
which impelled him to this indiscretion. He loved 
those heights and valleys with a faithful affection. 
"I have been asked," he once wrote, "if we didn't 
get tired of the same mountains and the same walks. 
Wttiy, if there were only one mountain and one walk, 
there would be variety enough." 



FOUR BUSY YEARS 171 

There spoke the true artist. Yet it must be ad- 
mitted that this nature-lover spent little time in 
dalliance with his mistress, but wooed her after the 
rough fashion of a conqueror. There is in the diary 
of 1908 an account of a ten days' tramp from Riffelalp 
to St. Moritz (with wide deviations) which equals, if 
it does not surpass, the records of earlier years. Read- 
ing it, we are forced to admit that, not adventure 
only, but mere endurance has an inexplicable charm 
for those who are strong enough and brave enough 
to endure. For seven days, Paine and Orthwein were 
members of the party. For nine days, Mrs. White 
tramped heroically by her husband's side. The tenth 
day he crossed the Julier Pass alone. On the third 
evening, after a walk of twenty-two miles over diffi- 
cult ground, he makes this cheerful entry in the 
diary : 

"To-night my two little toes, my left great toe, 
and my left heel burn as if my feet had been run over. 
My calves and thighs ache, and hurt to the touch. 
My back is sore and strained, and my side bruised 
from yesterday's fall. My shoulders feel the effects 
of carrying a heavy knapsack. My face is peeling 
from sunburn. I am * creepy' from fatigue and the 
nervous exhaustion due to the pain in my feet. 
Otherwise, barring a little overaction of the heart, 
I am all right." 

The ninth day brought them to Miihlen. On the 



172 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

tenth it was snowing hard. Mrs. White's shoe had 
burst, her heel was blistered, her ankle badly swollen. 
Under these discouraging circumstances, Dr. White 
(handsomely conceding that her record was "well 
enough for a woman, and ought to content her") 
insisted upon her completing the trip by diligence; 
while he donned clothes and shoes, wet from the 
storm of the day before, and started for his climb in 
the snow. The drifts grew deeper and deeper as he 
ascended. He struggled through them with increas- 
ing difficulty, and a well-defined apprehension lest he 
should give out on this lonely way. Six hours of 
exertion, too severe to be exhilarating, brought him 
to the summit of the Pass. "At the top I put my 
hand on one of the stone pillars erected by Augustus, 
thought a few noble thoughts, looked at the road 
before me going down, thanked God for the attrac- 
tion of gravitation, and started for the Engadine at 
a gait which would n't have disgraced Weston. I 
actually did the next five miles in one hour and 
seven minutes." 

It was natural enough that this prowess should 
have been a matter of pride to a man who, a year 
before, had been leading the cautious life of a con- 
valescent. His delight, when the long tramp was 
done, bubbles over in the pages of the diary. "If any 
gentleman of gambling propensities wants to bet, I '11 
back myself to walk, climb, swim, ride, bicycle, row, 



FOUR BUSY YEARS 173 

or do anything else not dependent upon grace of 
movement, against any man he can produce, who is 
near-sighted, white-haired, has an irritable heart 
(and temper), has had eight inches of gut cut out 
within two years, and is within three months of fifty- 
eight. All ball games barred." 

A merry and a light-hearted boast. But three years 
later, in the winter of 1911, Dr. White ruefully ad- 
mitted that the rheumatic neuritis in his right arm 
was directly attributable to the exposure and fatigue 
of that day on the Julier Pass. It began to trouble 
him before the close of the summer, and he had 
suffered from it at intervals ever since. 

There was no premonition of these evil times in 
the joyous weeks at St. Moritz. Flushed with tri- 
umph, brimming, as he believed, with health and 
vigour, the doctor despatched a letter to Effingham 
Morris, pleading with him, as he had pleaded many 
times before, to stop work and begin to play. 

"I don't like the persistence of that discomfort in 
the back," he wrote affectionately. "In the light of 
its duration, of your broken sleep, and of your in- 
temperance in the matter of work, it begins to look 
like a symptom of exhaustion; and only emphasizes 
the need of a real holiday of sufficient duration to do 
you permanent good. So now you know, — and don't 
meet me with some fool excuses about the 'impossi- 
bility of staying away longer.' Some time we'll both 



174 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

stay away for millions of centuries, and things will 
go on just the same. But don't hurry that day ! " 

In November, 1908, Dr. White was appointed by 
President Roosevelt a member of the new Army 
Medical Reserve Corps. These men were to compose 
a strong medical staff who would serve as first lieu- 
tenants in time of war, who could be put in immediate 
charge of base hospitals, and appoint their assist- 
ants. The President was well aware that the doctors 
who served in the Spanish-American War were in- 
effectively organized, and were too often political 
appointees. The Reserve Corps was part of his "Pre- 
paredness" programme, so distasteful to the senti- 
mental and inert. 

To Dr. White it was a wise and welcome measure. 
His enthusiasm for Roosevelt deepened with each 
year of his life. His delight when the President 
received the Nobel Prize was equalled by his admi- 
ration for the dignified use which the recipient endea- 
voured to make of it. He was pathetically ready to 
welcome Taft's nomination, and to uphold him 
against all doubters. "On the whole," he wrote to 
Thomas Robins in the spring of 1908, "I think the 
anti-Roosevelt party at the Club is losing ground. 
Three or four months ago, Taft, as the next President, 
was an 'absurd impossibility/ Now they say little or 
nothing against him, but content themselves with 
looking gloomy, and predicting Bryan's election." 



FOUR BUSY YEARS 175 

In other letters to the same sympathetic corre- 
spondent he refuses — wisely — to doubt Owen 
Wister's allegiance, and exults because "Ned Smith 
reluctantly approves of Roosevelt's having sent 
troops to Nevada, to suppress disturbances on the 
part of that gang of murderers known as the Western 
Federation of Miners." After a dinner at the "Ma- 
hogany Tree," he reports that he sat next to Charles 
Francis Adams, — "a bigoted, intolerant, self-opin- 
ionated, interesting, intelligent Yankee. He is 'agin' 
the President, and his reasons seemed, if possible, 
feebler than those I am accustomed to hear." 

Dr. White was ever a strong antagonist in an 
argument. It might have been said of him, as of 
another great surgeon, that he was "formidable 
when he was in the wrong, irresistible when he was 
in the right." He fought with the broadsword rather 
than with the rapier, and he had great difficulty in 
controlling his temper when he was very much in 
earnest. But he never argued unless acquainted with 
his facts. He had a tenacious memory and a lifelong 
habit of accuracy. No access of feeling could betray 
him into a groundless assertion, and no pity for an 
opponent's weakness could stay his heavy hand. He 
drove his weapon home, and, it must be confessed, 
he turned it in the wound. When the conversation 
strayed beyond physics, athletics, politics, tangible 
things which he well understood, and entered those 



176 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

higher fields where statistics count for little, and the 
emotions and experiences of mankind for a great 
deal, he was at a disadvantage because no deep stu- 
dent of humanity, — humanity which never in re- 
corded ages has been able to live by bread alone. 
"I am having a lonely time," he wrote in 1909, 
"when the talk turns on Roosevelt or Revealed 
Religion." 

In friendly badinage he was unsurpassed, and he 
loved a joke with the pure enjoyment of a school-boy. 
Many of his letters were filled with raillery, and he 
carried on contests in doggerel with any of his friends 
who had a gift that way. He wrote one summer from 
St. Moritz to Effingham Morris in Philadelphia, 
using an envelope on which, in lieu of name, he had 
pasted a fairly good newspaper portrait of his friend. 
The patient post-office officials, accustomed to dis- 
play the ingenuity of secret service men, delivered 
this letter safely and promptly, to the delight of the 
sender, and the embarrassment of the recipient. 

Perhaps it was this ineradicable boyishness which 
made Dr. White delight in the society of children. 
He won their affections easily, and he never tired of 
their companionship. They brightened and soothed 
the tediousness of Nauheim. When he went to At- 
lantic City he invariably met "a nice little girl," or 
"two stirring little boys," with whom he spent his 
days on the beach. Upon every ocean trip he records 



FOUR BUSY YEARS 177 

his intimacy with children. He was much pleased 
when a friend on the Cedric heard one passenger say 
to another: "Dr. White of Philadelphia is on board." 
To which the second man answered: "Oh, yes, I 
know him by sight. He's the man with a gray mous- 
tache and several children." He wrote to Effingham 
Morris from the Adriatic: "There are some dear little 
children on board — five of them — with whom I play 
all day. We came over together last September, and 
are true and tried friends. Letty tells me she heard 
a passenger say: 'That old gentleman is certainly de- 
voted to his children.' I think she put in the 'old.' " 

He was as garrulous as a grandfather in repeating 
the witticisms of his friends' offspring. Dr. Penrose's 
little son interested him especially, and he had always 
an anecdote to tell of this precocious child. One story 
I thought, and still think, remarkable, as illustrating 
the unconscious subtlety of the childish mind. Dr. 
White, going one morning to Dr. Penrose's house, 
found this eight-year-old boy playing with a train of 
cars which he was loading with bits of wood, and an 
occasional lump of coal, purloined from the scuttle. 
"Hello, Boies," he said; "where are you running 
your train to?" "To Zanzibar," answered the child. 
"And what's your load?" "Witches, and ghosts, and 
hobgoblins. And there are n't any witches, and there 
are n't any ghosts, and there are n't any hobgoblins." 
"Why, then," asked the amazed visitor, "are you 



178 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

running a trainload of them to Zanzibar?" "Be- 
cause," said the child, "the people of Zanzibar don't 
know there are n't any." 

Of rival schools of medicine, Dr. White was al- 
ways profoundly intolerant, and he hated proprietary 
drugs with a just and righteous hatred. Once in a 
London hotel he found himself seated at table next 
to the thrice celebrated Munyon, from whom he fled 
as from the pestilence. "An honest, straightforward 
burglar who takes his chance of being killed or jugged 
is comparatively respectable," was his indignant 
comment. This martial attitude inspired him to 
work hard in the spring of 1909 for the new Medical 
Examiners Bill, then being prepared for the state 
legislature. He believed it to be a wise and a much 
needed measure, and he rejoiced because it "in- 
volved a row with osteopaths, homoeopaths, eclectics, 
and all the other quacks in town and state." 

The friends and former students of Dr. White had 
been for some time eager to present his portrait to 
the Medical Department of the University. This 
year they subscribed the money, and asked his con- 
sent. He in turn wrote to Sargent, who was still 
struggling to escape from the bondage of portraits, 
and put the questions bluntly. Would he paint the 
picture? Would he paint it in June? Would he object 
too keenly to the scarlet gown of Aberdeen? 

Sargent, well accustomed to his friend's humorous 



FOUR BUSY YEARS 179 

moods, thought this letter a jest, and treated it as 
one. It took a second missive to convince him that 
the request was made in sober earnest; and then, like 
a loyal friend, he bowed his head to the yoke. True, 
the image of his sitter, clad in dazzling tints, haunted 
his sleepless nights, "invoking with a savage grin the 
name of friendship to hurl me back to the damned 
abyss of portraiture, out of which it has taken me two 
years to scramble." True, he wrote pitifully that he 
hoped Dr. White's admiring friends did not want a 
three-quarter length. "That would take much longer, 
and looking at a large surface of scarlet affects me as 
they say it does army tailors, who have to retire to 
the vomitorium every three-quarters of an hour. 
You are sure to know all about the close connection 
between the optic nerve, the colour scarlet, and the 
epigastrium." True, he cabled in an access of despair: 
"Prefer death to three-quarter length." Nevertheless, 
he painted the portrait (a half-length), painted it in 
the Aberdeen gown of scarlet and light blue, with the 
University of Pennsylvania hood, and consoled him- 
self by declaring that his old friend looked like a 
"South African macaw," — being apparently un- 
aware that macaws are a product of tropical America. 
On the 14th of June, Sargent wrote to Dr. White, 
who was expected to land on the 20th: "By this time 
I suppose you are on the bridge, practising a becom- 
ing expression. I am also training for you by a course 



180 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

of drawing from the antique. If you get here on 
Sunday, the 20th, I shall await you on Monday, at 
eleven o'clock. Bring your war-paint in the way of 
gowns, etc. I hope Mrs. White will come with you to 
administer anaesthetics, and, generally, lend a helping 
hand." 

The sittings began on the 21st, Sargent swearing 
vigorously that this would be his last, his very last 
portrait. It was rumoured that he had already re- 
fused a hundred and fifty commissions; but then he 
was always refusing something or somebody. He re- 
fused resolutely to make speeches; and, as he never 
burdened himself with book-plates and other artless 
impedimenta, he escaped the demands of collectors. 
One day when he was painting his friend, he refused 
to dine with the King and Queen at the American 
Embassy. "I'd certainly go if I were asked," com- 
ments Dr. White simply. "He is more indifferent to 
such things. They bore him." 

The ocean voyage had browned the doctor to a 
rich mahogany, and the portrait was finished before 
he had a chance to pale under the mild London skies. 
He delighted in this Malayan tint, and explained 
indignantly to Henry James and other startled 
friends that he was often much darker, — which 
would have seemed impossible. Sargent contented 
himself with expressing a hope that the picture 
would protect him from future applications. "It 



FOUR BUSY YEARS 181 

will suit my purpose better to let people think that 
this is my present style than to make a plea for ex- 
tenuating circumstances." That he knew his work 
to be good, a penetrating likeness, a virile and dis- 
tinguished portrait, is proved by his asking Dr. 
White to lend the canvas to the Buffalo Exhibition. 
It was shipped to the United States in September, 
and was formally presented to the University by Dr. 
Stengel, and accepted by Dr. Frazier, on the 22d of 
February, 1910. In the meantime it had been hung 
in the winter exhibit of the Academy of the Fine 
Arts. There I found Dr. Keen earnestly contemplat- 
ing it on the night of the Private View. "Don't tell 
me that the leopard cannot change its spots," he 
said, "for White has certainly changed his skin." 

The Engadine programme in the summer of 1909 
was materially modified by the fact that Dr. and Mrs. 
Martin, and Dr. and Mrs. Clark, joined the Whites 
at St. Moritz. The newcomers proclaimed themselves 
burning with zeal for a walking tour, and August 2d 
was set for a start. It snowed all morning and rained 
all afternoon. Dr. Martin lightly proposed a train. 
Dr. White explained that travelling by train was not, 
and never could be, a walking tour. Dr. Martin ad- 
mitted the irrefutable nature of this argument, and 
compromised, as did the Clarks, by driving. They 
repeated this measure whenever they were tired, or 
the weather was unpropitious. There was nothing 



182 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

unduly strenuous about that trip. When the friends 
reached Menaggio, Dr. Clark took one swim every 
day, Dr. Martin, two, Dr. White, three. Dr. Clark 
rowed sparingly, Dr. Martin, moderately, Dr. White, 
exhaustively. "They think," wrote the diarist, "that 
I'm a fool to work so hard. I know they're fools to 
miss the edge that plenty of exercise always puts on 
outdoor amusements. We're all satisfied." 

Another friend of still more tranquil habits came 
to St. Moritz in August. This was Mr. John G. 
Johnson. He stated tersely that he was not there to 
scramble over ice-pits, but meant to read novels and 
play solitaire every day, and all day, until he left. 
Two weeks later he wrote to Dr. White, then at 
Menaggio, that he was still reading novels and play- 
ing solitaire in great comfort and contentment. 

On his return to Philadelphia in the autumn, Dr. 
WHiite found fresh fields of labour awaiting him. He 
had already, at Mr. Johnson's solicitation, accepted 
membership in the Western Saving Fund Society. 
Now he was appointed by the Board of Judges a 
member of the Fairmount Park Commission. It was 
an appointment which, in newspaper language, "gave 
wide satisfaction " to all save the appointee, whom it 
was destined later on to enmesh in a particularly 
lively quarrel. More and more, as the years went by, 
it became the habit of astute boards to pile work 
upon the shoulders of a man who was perfectly sure 



FOUR BUSY YEARS 183 

to do it. For shirkers and slackers he had a profound 
aversion; for hedgers and temporizers a still more 
profound contempt. A tenacious fidelity to old cus- 
toms and to new duties characterized him through- 
out life. He served steadfastly on the Board of Stew- 
ards of the American Rowing Association. Years had 
passed since he severed his connection with Blockley; 
but he seldom failed to attend the "Old Blockley" 
reunions of doctors and surgeons, and he stood ever 
ready to assist in needed measures of reform. A 
clause in that profoundly human document, his will, 
bequeathed $5000 to the syphilitic ward, the interest 
of which was to be given every year to some poor 
patient who had been pronounced sound enough to 
be free, and who was decent enough to try and re- 
build his life, if help were given him to bridge over 
the first hard months of convalescence. 

Dr. White had not found it easy to escape from 
surgery by the simple surrender of his practice. Old 
patients refused to be surrendered, and new ones called 
imperatively for aid. In December, 1908, Secretary 
Root injured his knee, and begged Dr. White to come 
to Washington in consultation, — a favour for which 
he expressed then and later the liveliest sense of obli- 
gation. John G. Johnson, having need of a severe 
operation, insisted that his old friend should operate, 
brushing aside the latter's reasonable misgivings, and 
declining to be touched by any other hand than his. 



184 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

In the winter of 1910, Henry James, hugging his 
solitude at Rye, wrote sombrely to his friend: "The 
days are short and dark, the rain eternal, the mud 
infernal, the society nil. But, with the intuition of 
genius, I none the less feel the weeks and the months 
run through my fingers like water." 

They ran swiftly, but they bore misfortune on 
their current. Mr. James was, after all, an American, 
and no American can vegetate with safety. He knew 
he ought to be in London. He admitted that Lon- 
don was the only cure for his ailments, the sovereign 
remedy for ageing limbs and a heavy heart. Yet he 
stayed perversely at Rye, in close proximity to a 
Salvation Army, and his health and spirits visibly 
declined. Later, the lamentable death of his brother, 
Professor William James, plunged him into profound 
grief and melancholy. "Every departure," says Mon- 
taigne, "breaks a set of sympathies." There were so 
many sets of sympathies between these brothers that 
the years were too short to mend the shattered life 
of the survivor. 

The spring of 1910 brought three of the four 
friends together in England, — England visibly sad- 
dened by King Edward's death, and dimly aware of 
the disastrous nature of its loss. Sargent was in Lon- 
don, rioting in his escape from portrait painting, 
exhibiting a "Corfu Landscape," and a "Glacier 
Stream," at the Academy, and spending happy 



FOUR BUSY YEARS 185 

nights in watching Pavlova and Mordkin dance. 
The Abbeys had bought a beautiful old manor house 
near Winchester (Elizabethan in the main, but with 
a wall or two which dated from the time of Richard 
the Second), and were also in London, deep in plans 
for alterations, furnishings, etc. The artist did Dr. 
White a good turn, which was duly appreciated. 
Hearing that his friend's silk hat had been left in 
Philadelphia, he promptly presented him with one 
which he held in just abhorrence. It had been the 
property of Mr. Cross — known to the world as 
George Eliot's husband — who had walked off from 
a dinner with Abbey's new hat, leaving in its place 
one of his own, partly worn, and decorated with a 
cigarette hole in the side. When they next met, 
Abbey voiced an indignant protest, to which the 
successful raider replied unconcernedly, "Aw really. 
Just fahncy now." Abbey bought a new hat, and 
handed over his souvenir to Dr. White, who wore it 
once or twice until his own head-gear arrived; and 
then, true to his instinct for hoarding everything 
that had played the least part in his life, boxed it up, 
and carried it back to Philadelphia, to be stowed 
away in some capacious closet of the Rittenhouse 
Square home. 

This summer the Whites actually succeeded in 
persuading the Abbeys to visit them at St. Moritz. 
Dr. White never could be brought to understand 



186 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

why his friends did not spend their holidays in the 
Engadine, and on the Italian lakes, as he did. He 
represented to them in moving terms how much 
they missed, and how completely they were at fault 
in missing it; and they answered with ribald and un- 
seemly jests. Sargent wrote: "Wild omnibus horses 
would not draw me from this domain to wallow on 
your Lascivious Lakes." Henry James, always im- 
patient of Switzerland, and of the "elevating amuse- 
ments" it afforded, audaciously proposed that his 
"passionate friend" should come to Rye instead. 
"If you'll let me tie ropes around your waist, give 
you a pickaxe to carry, and stick a brandy flask into 
your pocket, you will be able to walk up and down 
this backyard, with every other natural inducement 
to believe you are on the Matterhorn." 

Abbey alone listened to the voice of reason, and 
presented himself at St. Moritz, with the astonishing 
result that, instead of panting up mountain-sides, for 
which hardy sport nature had unfitted him, the art- 
ist insisted that his friend should follow his lead, and 
learn to draw, for which amiable accomplishment na- 
ture had, with equal austerity, unfitted Dr. White. 
A sketch-book was selected with great care, and Ab- 
bey sent to London for an instructive little volume on 
the "Making of Pictures." Thus equipped, the friends 
sallied forth in search of material and inspiration. 
The pupil made amazing progress, only nothing he 



FOUR BUSY YEARS 187 

drew was recognizable, or of the right size. "If I try 
and sketch a rowboat," he wrote from Menaggio, "it 
looks like an ocean liner, or a floating peanut." 

Running through this summer's diary, and in some 
measure through all the diaries, is a vein of raillery 
which corresponded with family jokes, and with the 
give and take of family banter. What Dr. White most 
enjoyed was to deride his wife and sister-in-law ar- 
rayed in arms, and arms of exceeding sharpness, 
against him. When he wrote teasingly of his wife, it 
was in continuation of this battle of wits, in which he 
was alternately conqueror and conquered. His one 
lasting advantage lay in the fact that he kept a diary, 
and Mrs. White did n't. At Menaggio he records the 
arrival of home papers which he wanted to read, but 
of which she promptly took possession. 

"Letizia in Italian means joy or gladness. My little 
Joyness read the recently arrived 'Ledger' to me, and 
I noted mentally her selections. She began with the 
death of Mrs. Snowden; then commented on the 
death of Judge Craig Biddle; then tried to remind me 
of some one on whom I had once operated, who was 
of course dead, and whose sister had just died; then 
read about the epidemic of infantile paralysis in 
Pennsylvania, the pest of potato bugs in Chester, and 
the appearance of caterpillars in Philadelphia, with 
side remarks about caterpillars on the farm, and a 
diagnosis of the death of our old sow, and a word on 



188 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

the need of a new pig-sty. Then she skimmed the 
death list, and wondered if Miss Kate Biddle had 
died. Then she told me that the Athletics had just 
lost a game or two, and that their percentage had 
gone down. Then she stopped a minute to comment 
upon Kate's inability to stand American heat. Then 
she settled to work again on the remainder of the 
death list, the low price of all our stocks, and a couple 
of railroad and automobile accidents. She was busy 
with a description of the bodies that were removed 
from the last wreck when we arrived at the spiaggia. 
I felt quite cheered up." 

In the autumn of this year, Dr. White took a step 
he had been for some time contemplating, and sev- 
ered the last tie which bound him to the profession 
he had served for forty years. He resigned the John 
Rhea Barton Professorship of Surgery at the Univer- 
sity. The resignation of his chair followed inevitably 
the resignation of his surgical practice four years ear- 
lier. He was only sixty, and full of potential force. It 
seemed too soon to step outside the ranks in which 
he had risen to supreme command. Had he foreseen 
what four more years would bring upon the world, he 
would have stood by his guns, and bided his chance 
to give his skill and experience to the great cause of 
justice and civilization. 

There was the usual melancholy round of last 
words, and presentations, and regrets. Dr. Edward 



FOUR BUSY YEARS 189 

Martin succeeded him as John Rhea Barton Profes- 
sor. The D. Hayes Agnew Surgical Society held a 
meeting at Dr. Martin's house, and presented Dr. 
White with a loving cup. The students of the third 
and fourth year medical classes gave him a farewell 
reception in the amphitheatre of Logan Hall, pre- 
sented him with a very handsome hall-clock, and 
shouted themselves hoarse in his honour. He had al- 
ways been popular with his classes, and they had 
recognized the keen and generous character of his re- 
gard. Years had passed since Dr. William Pepper, 
whose name should be forever honoured by the city 
which he served, had rescued the University of Penn- 
sylvania from the state of coma into which it had 
fallen, and had breathed new life into its shrunken 
veins. In this work of revivification Dr. White had 
bravely helped. Less philosophical and less imper- 
sonal than Dr. Pepper, less patient under injury, and 
less lenient to a blundering world, he was moved to 
wrath by provocations over which the older physi- 
cian would have shrugged tolerant shoulders. But he 
could no more have been alienated from the college 
by such provocations than he could have been alien- 
ated from the United States by an Administration, 
or from Philadelphia by its politicians, or by the 
"social inbreeding" he astutely recognized and de- 
plored. "The people think they are moving, but they 
are like sticks in an eddy." His country was his coun- 



190 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

try, his birthplace was his birthplace, his Alma Mater 
was his Alma Mater, and he stood ready to serve all 
three while breath was left in his body. The notion — 
borrowed from Germany — that criticism spells dis- 
loyalty was less common then than now. 

At the students' reception, Dr. White made a brief 
and highly characteristic speech. It had been his rare 
good fortune to inspire confidence in those whom he 
taught. His enthusiasms were apt to be contagious. 
"There was no resisting the exhilaration of his spirit, 
or the impetus of his example," said a keen observer. 
Now that he was speaking to these students for the 
last time, he admitted that his greatest pleasure and 
pride lay in the fact that, during the thirty years in 
which he had lectured, only one man had — to his 
knowledge — gone to sleep in class. "I did not know 
who this man was," he said, "I should not know him 
if I saw him now awake. But I shall never forget the 
shock of that sleeping face." 

There spoke the spirit of the man. I recall, by way 
of contrast, Dr. Horace Howard Furness saying to 
me that the person whom he most liked to see at his 
Shaksperian readings (readings which stirred the 
heart and set the blood a-tingling) was a mutual ac- 
quaintance who seemed to me strangely unworthy 
of this preference. "Yes," he added, in answer to my 
unspoken question, "I'd much sooner see her than 
you, because she sleeps two thirds of the time, and I 



FOUR BUSY YEARS 191 

have the satisfaction of knowing that there is at least 
one person in the audience who is thoroughly enjoy- 
ing herself." 

There was none of this altruism about Dr. White. 
He liked his students to attend to his lectures, not 
only because there were many things which it be- 
hooved them to know, but because he was speaking 
to them. It takes a good deal to galvanize college 
classes into life, and to rivet their attention. This he 
was able to do. He was not a tranquillizing speaker 
upon any subject. You liked, or you did not like, 
what he had to say; but in either case you stayed 
awake and listened. 



CHAPTER X 

FREEDOM 

THERE is a story of Kipling's about a Scotch 
sea-going engineer who came into a fortune, for- 
sook his engine-room, and spent his long-hoped-for 
freedom in doing for love the work he had formerly 
done for pay. Dr. White was now a free man. He, too, 
had abandoned his life's work. But there remained 
the work of other people, and those odds and ends 
of employment which consume leisure, and are war- 
ranted to keep our interests and irritability from de- 
cay. For one thing, he was elected a member of the 
Board of Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania. 
It was a hotly contested election, for this, being a 
year of changes, was also a year of disputation. Few 
boards welcome a dynamic force into their slumber- 
ous bosoms. They like a man who can be put on the 
difficult jobs; but the worst of such a member is that 
he will seldom let sleeping dogs lie, and there is a 
deal of disturbance attendant upon their awakening. 
When Dr. White held the chair of surgery, he had al- 
ways striven to get the men he wanted under him. 
Now that he was a trustee, he was as full of fight as 
ever. "Uncertainty about anything close to my 
plans and wishes always was killing to me," is his 



FREEDOM 193 

naive admission. "I know you for the ruthless Ter- 
rorist you are," is Robins's more forceful fashion of 
describing the situation. 

Provost Harrison resigned his position after six- 
teen years of faithful and strenuous service, and Vice- 
President Edgar Fahs Smith succeeded him. On the 
22d of February the University conferred the degree 
of LL.D. on our good friend, Count von Bernstorff, 
who was received with tumultuous applause. The 
prayer delivered by the Reverend Dr. William Henry 
Roberts, Clerk of the Presbyterian General Assem- 
bly, held special petitions for the Emperor of Ger- 
many and the King of England. Count von Bern- 
storff made a most interesting speech in praise of all 
things German, and expounded to us the "Science of 
Social Government," about which we were destined 
to be later on more fully and freely enlightened. 

That Dr. White's labours as a trustee were ulti- 
mately crowned with success, and that his highest 
hopes were realized, is shown by a letter sent early in 
June to announce the glad tidings to Thomas Rob- 
ins. "As to the University, everything has gone my 
way," he writes triumphantly. "I haven't lost a 
trick yet. The Governor has signed our bill for $995,- 
000, which is $515,000 more than we ever before suc- 
ceeded in getting from the State. It makes us easy 
for two years, if there is n't another dollar begged 
or given. We've raised many salaries, adding about 



194 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

$75,000 to the salary list, and diffusing an atmos- 
phere of content and prosperity. Several of our best 
men, who were on the point of going elsewhere, are 
now fixed; and others will give cheerful instead of 
reluctant work." 

One break for liberty Dr. White made in the win- 
ter of 1911. He and Mrs. White went to Bermuda, 
being urged thereto by doctors and friends. The trip 
was like all similar trips, — a replacing of ordinary by 
extraordinary exertions, and of vital interests by arti- 
ficial ones. Dr. White bicycled all day, except when 
he was swimming. He had the usual assortment of 
accidents, and reports them with the usual acrimony. 
"I picked up on the water's edge a beautiful blue, 
soft, translucent creature, to show it to Letty," he 
writes in the diary. "I'm not sure whether it was a 
jelly fish or a nautilus. Anyhow it stung my finger, 
which is now red, swollen and aching. I think I can 
be stung by more kinds of animals than any one else 
on this planet. If an apple-dumpling were floating on 
the sea, and I picked it up, it would sting — if it 
did n't bite me." 

Three days later he reports that he has a cold, from 
getting alternately over-heated and chilled; and also 
a sprained ankle. "Moreover, I twisted my back a 
little in diving, and have a sore spot over the lumbar 
spine. My stung finger still aches, and my shoulder 
and arm are annoying me. My bicycle saddle came 



FREEDOM 195 

off (from the breaking of a bolt), and I bruised my- 
self on the bare wires. I broke a finger-nail against 
the edge of a table I was moving, and that finger is 
sore. The salt water (from diving) has made me deaf 
in one ear. Otherwise I am in splendid condition." 

Thus fortified he returned to Philadelphia, to be 
met by evil tidings. Abbey was ill. He had been suf- 
fering increasingly for months, but continued to la- 
bour upon the Harrisburg decorations; "putting work 
of the very first and finest order into those bottom- 
less (or topless) spaces," wrote Henry James, and 
striving vainly to outspeed the stealthy step of Death. 
As the spring deepened, his malady laid a stronger 
hand upon him; and, early in June, Osier and Mrs. 
Abbey cabled to Dr. White, begging him to come to 
London at once, and be present at an "exploratory" 
operation upon his friend. 

The doctor snatched the first sailing he could get, 
stowing himself away in a lower cabin on the Mau- 
retania, and leaving Mrs. White to follow with her 
sister and her brother-in-law in a fortnight. He ar- 
rived in London to find it in the throes of the Coro- 
nation, and Mrs. Abbey urged him to occupy one 
of their seats in front of the Reform Club. Heavy- 
hearted, and out of tune with the gaudy pageant, 
he shuffled through the crowded, scaffolded streets. 
"The Londoner's one idea of decorating his city," 
said W T histler, "is to cover it up and sit on it." The 



196 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

figures of burning interest to him were Lord Roberts 
and Lord Kitchener. The spectacle he enjoyed was 
the marching of the splendid British and Colonial 
regiments. Had he been gifted with second-sight, he 
would have beheld these men swathed in their wind- 
ing sheets. Three years more, and their graves yawned 
for them. Germany's plans were maturing; her stra- 
tegic railways were built; her arms and ammunition 
were stored; she was waiting her hour to strike. And 
England was self -blinded. Lord Roberts had given her 
warning. In the plainest words he could use, he had 
foretold the invasion of the Huns; and he had received 
the reward meted out to prophets, — discredit and dis- 
trust. Liberal statesmen had decried his suspicions of 
a "friendly power," and the Liberal press had feelingly 
rebuked "the crude lusts and fears that haunt the sol- 
dier's brain." 

On the 25th of June the exploratory operation was 
performed by an English surgeon, Mr. Moynihan, — 
Dr. Osier and Dr. White being present. It revealed a 
situation so hopeless that there was nothing to be 
done but tell the truth to Mrs. Abbey (a harsh duty 
which devolved upon Dr. WTiite), and make the sick 
man as comfortable as possible for the remaining 
months of his life. WTien the old friends parted, one 
feared and the other knew they would never meet 
again. Sargent, with superb generosity, gave up his 
summer's plans, and returned to England to superin- 



FREEDOM 197 

tend the completion of several of the Harrisburg pic- 
tures which were so nearly finished that assistants 
could deal with them; and also to arrange for an 
exhibition of the artist's work at Shepherd's Bush. 
Abbey died on the 1st of August, and Henry James 
wrote to Dr. White, lamenting his loss, but adding, 
"He had a pretty big and glorious life." It is a com- 
ment which recalls Mr. Brownell's summing up of 
the novelist's own career: "If any life can be called 
happy before it is closed, that of Mr. Henry James 
may certainly be so called." This was written in 1909. 
There were still five years of calm. 

The remainder of Dr. White's summer was spent, 
without keen enjoyment, in Switzerland, and on the 
Italian lakes. No sooner had he returned to Philadel- 
phia in the autumn than he began his memorable 
contest for the abolishment of motor races in Fair- 
mount Park. As a member of the Park Commission, 
he offered on October 12th the following resolution: 
"Resolved, that in the opinion of the Fairmount 
Park Commission it is unadvisable to continue the 
automobile races in the Park, and that, to avoid dis- 
appointment and misunderstanding, this opinion be 
transmitted to the persons heretofore chiefly con- 
cerned, and be made public." 

It was a bold stand, determinedly upheld. The 
races were popular with sporting motorists; with the 
public, which gathered in crowds at the most danger- 



198 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

ous curves on the track, in the hope of seeing a smash; 
and with that large body of citizens whose plea for all 
happenings, from a presidential nomination to a cir- 
cus, is that it brings trade to the town. Grave pro- 
tests against "reactionary Philadelphia" were heard 
from every side, and scornful critics asked mockingly, 
" Was this White the athlete, the lifelong champion of 
all dangerous sports, who now proffered the ignoble 
plea of 'safety first'?" 

To these assaults Dr. White presented an un- 
broken front. He had always taken a utilitarian view 
of motors, as vehicles for transportation; and he 
pointed out that, while most sports worth consider- 
ing hold an element of danger, this danger should be 
incurred by, and confined to, the sportsman, — not 
shared by spectators. There had been accidents at 
Syracuse and at St. Louis which had resulted in se- 
vere injuries to lookers-on, as well as to the racing 
motorists. This he held to be unsportsmanlike and 
uncivilized. 

The Park Commissioners were equally reluctant to 
pass the resolution, or to reject it. They wanted natu- 
rally to be let alone, and spared such burning ques- 
tions. They tried postponement, hoping it would die 
a natural death, but they reckoned without Dr. 
White's sustaining power. He had kept too many pa- 
tients alive, to let a resolution die. They tried refer- 
ring it to the sub-committee on Police and Superin- 



FREEDOM 199 

tendence; and that acute body sent it back to them 
without action or comment. They tried to show they 
lacked jurisdiction, and the doctor promptly pro- 
cured the legal opinion of Mr. George Wharton Pep- 
per, which was to the effect that the authority to per- 
mit or forbid the races within the Park confines lay 
with the Park Commission. On December 13th, the 
postponed resolution was brought up for considera- 
tion. Dr. White again spoke briefly in its defence: 

"There is no form of physical competition or stren- 
uous sport," he said, "which is wholly devoid of dan- 
ger to the participant; and sometimes, as in mountain 
climbing, or in the pursuit of man-eating game, the 
element of danger is a justifiable stimulus. But the 
moment the peril is excessive, or extends to lookers- 
on, or, worse still, grows to be the chief element of 
interest, the usefulness of the sport is gone, and it 
becomes harmful and demoralizing. 

"I must frankly admit that I have attended and 
enjoyed these motor races in the past, and I have a 
keen admiration for the dexterity and fearlessness of 
the drivers. When I realized, however, my own re- 
sponsibility in the matter, my pleasure was marred, 
because spectators, who were encouraged by this 
Commission, of which I am a member, to be present, 
might be instantly killed in one of the races, and be- 
cause no conceivable precaution could eliminate this 
possibility." 



200 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

He won out. On May 8, 1912, the Commission 
passed the Resolution with only one dissentient vote. 
Much indignation was expressed by motorists. Some 
regret was felt by sight-seers. There was vague talk 
of "legal action." Then the press dropped the matter, 
the public forgot it, and the world moved uncon- 
cernedly on. 

On the 30th of March, a medallion in commemo- 
ration of Dr. Crawford Williamson Long, of the class 
of '39, was unveiled in the University of Pennsylvania. 
It was the work of Dr. Tait McKenzie. Dr. Long, it 
was claimed, was the first practitioner who, seventy 
years before, had used ether as an anaesthetic in sur- 
gery. Dr. WTiite made the address at the unveiling, 
and dwelt long and lovingly on the hard fortune 
which always attends the innovator. He told with 
relish the experiences of that stout-hearted Scotch 
surgeon, Sir James Simpson, who got himself into 
a world of trouble by using chloroform in cases of 
childbirth. He quoted the letter of an Edinburgh 
minister, who censured Simpson for employing a drug 
which was but "a decoy of Satan, apparently offering 
itself to bless women; but, in the end, destined to 
harm society, and rob God of the deep earnest cries 
which arise in time of trouble for help." 

The sins of the pulpit were balm to Dr. White's 
soul; but in this instance the laity was as deeply 
impressed by the immorality of chloroform as was 



FREEDOM 201 

the dourest cleric in Scotland. An Edinburgh mob 
went so far as to smash Dr. Simpson's windows, by 
way of signifying its disapproval of his interference 
with what they piously designated as "the curse of 
Eve." A male mob evidently. Men have always mani- 
fested a broad tolerance for this particular curse. It 
is about the only ruling of Providence which has their 
full and free concurrence. 

The presidential nominations were now darken- 
ing the horizon, and Dr. White's hopes for his beloved 
Roosevelt ran higher than did the hopes of more 
astute adherents. On the 12th of April the Colonel 
addressed two Philadelphia meetings, and was re- 
ceived with that tumultuous enthusiasm which is as 
a fire of straw. No man understood this better than 
he; and his suggestion that his audience should 
not "take it all out in shouting," betrayed his wide 
knowledge of humanity. Owen Wister presented him 
to the five thousand men and women packed into 
the Metropolitan Opera House; while to the fifteen 
thousand men and women on Broad Street he pre- 
sented himself in the homely fashion so dear to the 
heart of democracy. The nomination of Wilson failed 
to shake Dr. White's confidence. He wrote to Tom 
Robins that there was some satisfaction in it, inas- 
much as it meant the defeat of the forces that had 
betrayed their trust in Chicago. "The machine pol- 



202 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

iticians cannot hold the organization together. I con- 
sider Taft is as well out of it as if he were dead/' 

What wounded his spirit past healing was the con- 
tumacy of friends. Some there were who, like Robins 
and Sargent, gave Roosevelt an adherence as loyal 
as his own. Henry James, whom he rashly attempted 
to convert, had an invincible distaste for all presi- 
dential nominees. Effingham Morris, for whom his 
affection was strong, constant, and curiously out- 
spoken, was the associate whom he most wanted to 
see the light, and who dwelt permanently in dark- 
ness. The friends would argue until they quarreled, 
and Dr. White hated to quarrel with the few men 
whom he loved, as much as he liked to quarrel with 
the many men to whom he was indifferent. There is 
something profoundly wistful in the way he pleads 
with Mr. Morris during the heat of the presidential 
campaign: "If I could only have you and one or 
two others — but especially you — singing 'Onward 
Christian Soldiers!' by my side, on the same plat- 
form — both political and wooden — with the Colo- 
nel, my cup would overflow." 

It is strange how deep his feelings ran, how irre- 
sistibly the tide of a few strong emotions swept him 
through life. WTien, instead of mounting the Pro- 
gressive platform, Mr. Morris sent him some ribald 
rhymes on his great leader, he comments more in 
sorrow than in anger: "It's funny, of course. But 



FREEDOM 203 

that it should represent the serious view of men 
whose intelligence I had until recently considered as 
far above the average is a continual surprise." 

In truth he could no more tolerate a jest at the 
expense of Roosevelt than he could tolerate a jest at 
the expense of his profession. The Colonel himself 
often enjoyed such thrusts hugely. I have heard him 
roar with laughter over " Dooley's " amended title for 
his volume on "The Rough Riders." "If I was him, 
I'd call th' book 'Alone in Cubia.'" But though Dr. 
White admired this hardy sense of humour, this free- 
dom from the peevish vanity which cannot forgive a 
personal affront, he would not, even on this occasion, 
join in the laugh. His loyalty was too staunch, his 
allegiance too undivided. 

The summer found him still full of hope. He wrote 
in July to Mr. Edward Van Valkenburg, propos- 
ing three planks for the platform. First: A constitu- 
tional amendment giving the President power to veto 
items in appropriation bills. Second: A proviso that 
at least one member of the Cabinet shall have the right 
ex officio to participate in the debates of the House 
and Senate. Third: The establishment of a Federal 
Bureau of Health. " The first would stop the iniqui- 
tous business of adding riders. The second would put 
definite clearness into much legislation. The third 
would contribute to the safety, and therefore to the 
prosperity and happiness, of the whole nation." 



204 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

All of which is true, provided you are sure of your 
president, sure of your cabinet, and sure of your 
bureau. Of course no one is ever sure of Congress. 
But that is an old story. 

In October, Colonel Roosevelt's candidacy came 
near being closed by an assassin's hand. The bullet, 
deflected by a steel spectacle case, lodged between 
the third and fourth ribs, and stayed there. When 
the patient was strong enough to be taken home (he 
was fired at in Milwaukee), Dr. White accompanied 
him to New York; and joy that life was spared went 
far to solacing his faithful heart in the dark Novem- 
ber days. After the battle was over and lost, Roose- 
velt, who had foreseen no other issue, wrote a few 
words of comfort to his less prescient follower: 

"Looking back, I think I can say that we won 
more than we had a right to expect. My dear fellow, 
I very earnestly hope that we shall be able to develop 
some other leader who can do better than I have 
done in the fight for social and industrial justice, 
and that I shall never again be a candidate for the 
Presidency." 

The summer of 1912 was spent in the fashion of 
other summers, — a little of it in London, a great 
deal of it in the Engadine. Dr. Agnew used to say 
that at seventy a man should not break even a bad 
habit. Dr. White was only sixty-two; but his holiday 
habits were set. Now and then he admitted to Robins 



FREEDOM 205 

that flower-shows and German princelings palled on 
his jaded fancy; but there was always an avenue of 
escape. When hard pressed socially, he and Mrs. White 
retreated to their mountain fastnesses, and were safe. 

This season St. Moritz gave him little rest, be- 
cause a young American, a Harvard student, lay 
desperately ill in the hospital, and Dr. Bernhard 
implored his aid in a difficult and dangerous oper- 
ation. It was not the first time such help had been 
asked and given; but never before had he been so 
deeply interested, so gravely anxious. It was the old 
story of fighting with death, and, while that duel 
was on, Dr. White knew no respite from concern. He 
would leave the hospital late at night, and be in it 
again by seven in the morning. He kept a minute 
record of the case. "I am afraid that boy will slip 
through our hands after all," is his frequent and de- 
spairing report. He helped to dress the wound twice 
a day. "I could give them all lessons in surgical 
dressing to their advantage. They lack delicacy of 
touch and attention to detail. But, of course, I've 
seen and dressed a hundred cases where any doctor 
here has seen and dressed one." 

When at last the patient was pronounced out of 
danger, and the Whites fled to Menaggio, it was only 
to be pursued by a telegram, urging their immediate 
return. Fresh complications had arisen, and there was 
fresh need for help. "I've agreed to go, d it!" 



206 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

groaned the doctor, and go he did. The poor lad, 
who clung so desperately to life, greeted him with 
joy. He was cheerful and full of jokes. "Joking won't 
stop that fever," is the diary's grim comment; but 
perhaps it helped. Once more he was pulled out of 
the abyss, and his feet set upon the paths of earth. 
" If I ever get through with this case, I shall try to 
keep out of others," wrote Dr. White soberly, and 
Mrs. White added "Amen." 

The only conflicting interest that St. Moritz of- 
fered was the arrival in August of Prince Adalbert, 
the Kaiser's third son. He was a friend of the Orth- 
weins, and took enough of a fancy to Dr. White to 
confide to him many of his opinions, noticeably his 
liking for Americans, and his detestation of Jews. 
Also — but this was accidental — his views upon a 
more abstruse subject. Meeting the doctor one morn- 
ing in the corridor of the Kulm, he showed him an 
X-ray photograph of a skull, saying, "That's good 
of a monkey, is n't it?" 

Dr. White looked at the paper, and then at the 
young man. "Many human skulls are exactly like 
that," he answered. 

The Prince laughed. "As it chances, it's mine," 
he said. 

Again the doctor glanced at the royal conforma- 
tion, and observed cheerfully, "The resemblance to 
a monkey takes us back to our common ancestors." 



FREEDOM 207 

"Not to my ancestors," said the Prince quickly. 

"I was not alluding to the Hohenzollerns," ex- 
plained Dr. White; "but to the common ancestors 
of the human race, millions of years before there 
were any class distinctions." 

"I don't believe in that kind of thing," said the 
Prince. 

"But surely," protested Dr. White, "you believe 
in evolution. All your scientific men believe in it, as 
do scientific men the world over." 

"Well, I don't," said the Prince, and the subject 
was dropped. 

No sooner had the travellers returned to Phila- 
delphia in October than they began to plan their 
long meditated trip around the world. The time 
seemed ripe for its accomplishment. Germany, with 
sinister patience, bided her hour, and the nations 
which she so easily hoodwinked saw the years before 
them mellow with peace, and brimming with pleasur- 
able activities. All of the doctor's letters in the winter 
of 1913 are full of allusions to this cherished project, 
and all of his friends' letters to him are full of that 
qualified assent which is as far as friendship lends 
itself to enthusiasm. "I can only gape, and admire, 
and oh, so detachedly, applaud," is Henry James's 
method of expressing this familiar and discomfiting 
attitude. 

Dr. White really stood in need of a little moral 



208 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

support, because, though he wanted to go, he hated 
to leave. There was nothing which imperatively de- 
manded his presence, but there were many things 
which would suffer from his absence. He was toiling 
very hard over the needs of the University this win- 
ter, and he wrote and published in the spring an ex- 
haustive resume of the work done in the various 
departments. The paper is so singularly impersonal 
that it reads more like a bulletin than a eulogy; but, 
being designed as a basis for begging (an endowment 
fund of thirty millions was the writer's golden dream), 
no word which could be of service is left unsaid. "We 
do not seem to attract bequests as I think we should," 
is his anxious comment in a letter to Provost Smith. 
"This is a matter which will slowly right itself, but 
I may not live to see it." 

A matter of less moment, but one which had long 
vexed his mind when he had leisure to think about 
it, was the dismal decay into which Rittenhouse 
Square had been permitted to fall. In my youth this 
beloved but melancholy little park was shut in by 
tall iron railings which protected its gravel walks, 
dead turf, and moribund trees from the too careless 
incursions of the public. When the English sparrows 
had performed their appointed task, and had eaten 
up the measuring worms which were wont to descend 
upon us adroitly from every tree, the caterpillars 
took their place, and used the railings for nurseries. 



FREEDOM 209 

They were old established tenants with whom no 
one interfered. It was a shock to conservatism when 
the unsightly barriers were removed, and lawless 
citizens could step upon what was by courtesy called 
the grass. 

An effort had been made to have the Philadelphia 
squares put under the control of the Fairmount Park 
Commission, which might possibly have done some- 
thing for them; but it was clear to all concerned that 
only private enterprise could, or would, deal success- 
fully with what the newspapers were beginning to 
call "the city beautiful." The Rittenhouse Square 
Improvement Association met for the first time on 
the 19th of February, at the house of Mrs. Edward 
Siter, Dr. White acting as chairman. Big reforms 
were planned, and money was liberally subscribed. 
Dr. White was elected the first president of the As- 
sociation. To Professor Paul Cret of the University 
of Pennsylvania, and to Dr. Oglesby Paul, was en- 
trusted the work of transformation. The chief of the 
Bureau of City Property offered any cooperation 
which did not involve expenditure. Philadelphia had 
no money to give, but was gratifyingly rich in good- 
will. 

It would have been hard to find a man, in or out of 
town, who knew less about landscape gardening than 
did Dr. White; but no one was better fitted to bring 
any enterprise to a successful close. Moreover, since 



210 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

he had become a landed proprietor, he had gradually 
assumed the "nature hates a farmer" tone, common 
to his estate. It angered him when a transplanted 
tree languished and died, as it had angered him in the 
old days when a patient, who had been operated 
upon, gave up the fight for life. Locusts, he scornfully 
pronounced to be "weed trees," easy to grow and 
hard to kill; yet even locusts, planted with the nicest 
tenderness and care in Rittenhouse Square, took it 
upon themselves to assume delicacy of constitution, 
and withered away because he had an interest in 
their survival. 

Yet when the time came for him to start on the 
long voyage around the world, it was to his country 
home that his affections clung. The mangel-wurzels 
had so far fulfilled Sargent's prediction, and cast 
their spell upon him. "I hated to say good-bye yester- 
day to the farm, and the horses, and the dogs," he 
wrote wistfully to Thomas Robins. "I was much flat- 
tered by learning that the farmer's second boy was 
in tears in the farmhouse on account of having said 
good-bye to me. Farmers and their families have 
been, in my experience, scarcely human, and this is 
both touching and encouraging." 

Once on his way, the old adventurous spirit laid 
hold of him, and also the old assurance that what he 
was doing was the best thing in the world to do. Mrs. 
White was as unwearied a traveller as Sinbad, and 



FREEDOM 211 

parting from the mangel-wurzels cost her no pang of 
regret. She was also better able to bear up under the 
depressing baseball news which followed them to Eu- 
rope. The few hours spent at Gibraltar were over- 
cast by a report that the Athletics had lost three out 
of their first five games. At Menaggio — "throwing a 
gloom over what would otherwise have been a very 
happy day" — came the melancholy tidings that 
they had been beaten in New York and in Cleveland. 
It was not until the tourists reached Athens in Oc- 
tober that Dr. White's fears were permanently re- 
lieved. "As Letty came upstairs last night," he 
writes on the 16th, "she captured a Herald of the 
10th, with the inspiring, uplifting, and exhilarating 
news of the eight to two score in our favour in the 
third game. We've now used three pitchers, and 
they 've used six. I think it's a three to one bet on the 
Athletics. I'm surprised no one has cabled me." 

It was inevitable that the diary kept this autumn 
and winter should be far more minute than those of 
earlier years. Turkey, India, China, and Japan offered 
fresh fields of adventure. Dr. White wanted to be less 
expansive, he would have liked to spare himself fa- 
tigue; but he simply did not know how. "I've got 

this d d diary business so fixed on me that I can't 

tell when to stop," he wrote querulously from Greece. 
"I'm always thinking of my later, invalid, semi-se- 
nile years, when it will be the little things, the jokes, 



212 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

the unimportant trifles, which will bring back the ex- 
periences I shall then be tremulously trying to recall. 
... I swear, however, I'm going to write less. It's an 
awful habit. When once it has you in its vice-like 
grip, only the iron will, and the determination and 
endurance of a Christian martyr can break it. But 
I 've got them. So now you know." 

Many of the descriptions of people and of places 
are marvellous in their vigour and veracity. What 
Dr. White looked at, he saw, and what he saw seemed 
to be indelibly impressed upon his memory. He ac- 
centuated every detail because he remembered every 
detail, and because he was not squeamish in delinea- 
tion. In Venice, he and Mrs. White went to an eve- 
ning party given by Mr. Anthony Drexel in the Pa- 
lazzo Balbi Valier. It was an unusual assemblage, and 
there is a series of pen pictures in the diary, proving 
that no single personality was lost upon the attentive 
American. The guest who offered him the keenest 

diversion was the Marchesa , the daughter of an 

English Parliamentarian, who spent his life in finding 
fault with things as they were, and in taking his coun- 
trymen to task for their shortcomings. 

"She deserves a page to herself. If it were a page of 
letter paper, it would make most of the clothes she 
wore. Her gown was of an X-ray sort, cut down and 
slit up, and I don't think she had on any underwear, 
though I did n't make sure. If she had been dressed 



FREEDOM 213 

in a one-piece, cream-coloured, wet, close-fitting 
bathing-suit made of mosquito netting, she'd have 
been about as much clad. Her black hair was brought 
down in great curves to her eyebrows, and over her 
ears, out on her cheek, and down her neck. Her eyes 
were blacked, her lips scarlet, her face powdered, her 
cheeks rouged. She sat in a studied pose, holding a 
flower in her hand. During the singing she never 
changed her attitude except to roll her eyes at the 
man she was talking to, or to smell her flower, or to 
get a little mirror out of her hand-bag, look at her- 
self, and touch up with powder and rouge. She may, 
of course, be a model mother and housewife, who 
mends her own clothes — it would n't take her long — 
and teaches the children their A, B, C's; but she is a 
corker for gall. How she ever made up her mind to 
wear that costume outside of her bath-room gets me." 
No part of their stay in Egypt pleased the travel- 
lers half so well as a five days' ride through the des- 
ert. Their little caravan consisted of thirteen men, 
including Mahmoud the dragoman, eight camels, and 
Mahmoud's donkey. "I certainly am stuck on cam- 
els," comments Dr. White. "I always liked them, 
now I love them. They are so well fitted to their busi- 
ness, and know it, and attend to it. I think they are 
extremely intelligent. The Bedouins seem very kind 
to them. One boy cried yesterday morning because 
he thought they were overloading his special charge." 



Q14 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

Next to the camels and the great stretches of sand, 
which filled his soul with a sort of ecstasy (he re- 
sented Lake Kerun and the green tract of the Fay- 
oum as intrusions on their monotonous splendour), 
the doctor's heart went out to the Arab boys who 
walked with swift light strides alongside of their 
beasts. He envied them — being sixty-three — their 
supple youth and endurance. "They are all bare- 
foot, and go over the pebbles and rocks without the 
least evidence of discomfort. My lad covered nine- 
teen miles the first day, and eighteen miles the sec- 
ond, often running to keep up, chattering half the 
time, and minding it as much as Sam would mind a 
stroll around Rittenhouse Square." 

India and China afford so many thrills, even to 
indifferent tourists, and breed in them such a lust 
for description, that people who stay at home are apt 
to resent any allusion to these amazing countries. 
"What I have seen I do not need to hear about, and 
what I have not seen I do not want to hear about," 
is the common and pardonable attitude of humanity. 
But there was something in Dr. White's frenzy of 
enthusiasm, united to his very unusual gift of narra- 
tive, which conquered the most reluctant reader and 
listener. Now and then interesting things happened 
to him, and he told about them in a forceful and 
amusing way. At Bombay he and Mrs. White were 
invited to visit the Gaekwar of Baroda, a very rich 



FREEDOM 215 

and very powerful native prince, who had scandal- 
ized England and India by refusing to withdraw 
backwards from the presence of King George and 
Queen Mary when he came to offer fealty to his 
suzerain. He wheeled around and strode out of the 
audience hall as if he were every whit as good as a 
Hanoverian. 

Dr. White, however, found him far from awe- 
inspiring. A short, stout, jovial Indian gentleman, 
very much interested in the United States (he had 
sent a son to Harvard), in physical education, and in 
Theodore Roosevelt. He presented his guests with 
his photograph, and entertained them with sports 
which began with trained parrots, progressed to 
wrestlers and acrobats, and wound up with fighting 
buffaloes and elephants. The most extraordinary 
thing about him was the extent of his useless pos- 
sessions, ranging from a gold cannon which could n't 
be fired, and which was mounted on a silver gun- 
carriage, to the famous diamond, Star of the South, 
once the property of Napoleon the First, and valued 
at $1,200,000. Being the wealthiest ruler in India, 
the Gaekwar could afford unprofitable investments. 

The sights which of all others in the East enthralled 
Dr. White's fancy were the Burning Ghats of Ben- 
ares. The combination they presented of pictur- 
esqueness, loathsomeness, and unique rejection of 
the world's theories of sanitation, so fascinated the 



216 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

American surgeon that he returned again and again, 
to spend hours in rapt contemplation of their horrors. 
It is impossible to quote more than half of a single 
morning's experience; but this is enough to show 
that he missed no detail, and spared none to his 
readers. 

"Every Hindu is burned, — completely if the 
family can afford to buy enough wood, but partially 
anyhow, and, in Benares, the ashes or scraps are 
flung into the Ganges. It is a sanitary stream. What 
we actually saw, lying in our boat ten or twelve 
feet from the biggest of the ghats, beggars descrip- 
tion. One body lay on a pile of logs, and was covered 
with wood, a single foot protruding. Another was 
wrapped in a shroud. A third we knew to be a woman 
by the red cloth that covered her. A fourth was a 
very pretty little girl with long hair. She was about 
seven or eight years old. 

"While corpse number one was beginning to burn, 
and make a fine fat crackling, two men undressed 
the little girl, washed her with Ganges water, laid a 
strip of white cloth over her middle, and wrapped 
another around her. They then carried her up to the 
pyre built for her on a platform fifteen or twenty 
feet higher. By this time corpse number one was well 
under way. Now and then a toe from the protruding 
foot would burst, some melted grease would sputter 
and flare up in the fire, and there would be an un- 



FREEDOM 217 

pleasant whiff. The men who sold fire-wood, the 
priests who say — for a consideration — when the 
auspicious moment has come for the application of 
the torch, the men who furnish the fire, the men who 
wash the bodies and put them on the pyres, all stood 
about joking and laughing, as well they might. They 
make their living by taking the petty coins — the 
pice, of which it takes two to make a cent — from 
the poorest people in the world who have any coins 
at all. 

"While this was going on, ten yards away, at the 
foot of the next ghat — the Manikarnika — were 
many devotees scooping up the water that went 
from us to them (the Ganges flows to the north), 
sprinkling their heads with it, and drinking it out of 
their hands. Just at our feet an old hag was washing 
out the dirty sacking which had been the little girl's 
grave clothes. To our left, almost near enough to 
touch, a Pariah dog had made a great find. He was 
dragging from the water, up on the mud where he 
could eat at leisure, the remains of a body only half 
burned. It will be remembered that the poorest 
people are unable to buy enough wood to make a 
good job of it. They do the best they can, and what 
is not burned goes into the river. While the dog was 
at breakfast, and while the worshippers were drink- 
ing the water which came to them from his break- 
fast table, and from the old hag's laundry, and while 



218 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

corpse number one was blazing merrily, a man ap- 
peared above with a lot of thin burning sticks in his 
hand. He walked five times around the body of the 
little girl, touching her head each time, and then set 
fire to her pyre. The men on the steps of the ghat 
were joking and laughing loudly. Nearby two boys 
were wrestling. At the further end of the steps, a long 
file of washerwomen went up with enormous baskets 
on their heads, carrying clothes that had just been 
cleaned in the same current that was running past 
the burning ghat, and the dog and his meal, and the 
old hag with the child's coarse shroud, down to the 
worshippers who were always there, one succeeding 
another, and always drinking. 

"We pushed off and went with the stream, and, as 
we did so, we saw another contribution to the sacred- 
ness of the beverage. A new procession came down 
the river, but this time it was of dead animals, 
chiefly cats, swollen until they were as big as goats, 
and a donkey that looked like a young elephant. 
Mercy ! what a thirst that must have given the dev- 
otees when they saw it!" 

Christmas was spent on the train going to Rangoon, 
and there is this characteristic entry in the diary: 

"If when I was a very small boy, getting up Christ- 
mas mornings in the dark, and catching croup by 
reading Christmas books in my nightshirt and bare 
feet, I could have seen myself riding across the plains 



FREEDOM 219 

of Burmah, and going to golden pagodas, and star- 
ing at hundreds of gigantic idols, and shaven-headed 
Lamas with their chelas carrying their begging bowls, 
and crowds of black, yellow, and copper-coloured 
natives in robes of every hue of the rainbow, and 
priests ringing bells and beating gongs and burn- 
ing incense, and flower-decked girls bowing before 
shrines, and all the picturesque and barbaric rest of 
it, — well, I'd have been delirious with delight." 

In Colombo came word of Dr. Weir Mitchell's 
death. Two lines in a local paper announced the tid- 
ings; but even two lines in the Colombo press spell 
fame for a Philadelphia doctor; and it was bad news 
for the Philadelphian who read it. 

After the "dear old ghats" of Benares, no spectacle 
afforded Dr. White a more acute interest than did 
the narrow streets of Canton, and the broad expanse 
of the Pearl River, with its hundreds of thousands of 
inhabitants, living and dying on the boats on which 
they were born. He delighted in the little painted 
pigs — blue and yellow and purple spots decorating 
their fat sides — which roamed unmolested through 
the byways; in the agile night watchmen who pa- 
trolled the roofs instead of the streets; in the sinister 
old Place of Execution, where more people have been 
put to death than on any equal area of the earth's 
surface. The Chinese children, who never begged, 
gave him the impression of good-humour, common 



J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

sense, and stability; and in the Chinese restaurants 
he was charmed with his own skill in using chop 
sticks, contrasting the ease and grace of his perform- 
ance with the clumsiness of Mrs. White, who was 
sometimes reduced to the necessity of conveying her 
food to her mouth with her fingers. 

The University of Pennsylvania Settlement in Can- 
ton impressed Dr. White profoundly. His former stu- 
dent and old acquaintance, Dr. Joseph McCracken, 
was at the head of the hospital, which was run by 
half a dozen graduates of the University Medical 
School. All of these men had married college grad- 
uates, and all were striving to accomplish herculean 
tasks with the scanty resources at their command. A 
codicil in Dr. White's will, bequeathing five thousand 
dollars to Dr. McCracken, or to his successor, for the 
use of the hospital, proves the practical nature of his 
regard. It was the old story of his undying interest 
in all things connected with his Alma Mater. He 
was ill when he reached Yokohama, and the doctors 
warned him against exposure; but he went in a blind- 
ing snow storm to Tokio, to attend a dinner given 
by the University of Pennsylvania Alumni Associa- 
tion of Japan. 

"They were all Japs of course. There was a speech 
by Tosui Imadate, C.E. Class of 1879, laudatory of 
me, and welcoming me to Japan. There was a speech 
by me, laudatory of the University, and thanking 



FREEDOM 221 

them for their welcome. There were many little 
speeches — most of them by me — and some inter- 
esting reminiscences." 

To visit Japan in mid-winter is a hazardous ex- 
perience. It insures discomfort, and it affords gen- 
erous opportunities for disease. Dr. White tried to 
solace himself with the reflection that freshly fallen 
snow is as beautiful as blossoming cherry trees; but 
no aesthetic appreciation of the ice-bound scenery 
could keep the travellers warm. Nikko in February 
was as cosy as Lapland. They had soft coal fires in 
their grates, and in their worthless little Japanese 
stoves; they had brass vessels with smouldering 
charcoal embers over which to hold their frozen 
hands and feet; but the rooms remained "colder — 
much colder than Hell," and Dr. White speedily de- 
veloped influenza. He had himself carried around to 
temples and mausoleums, he missed no sight that 
Nikko offered; but he was well aware of his own 
unutterable folly. 

"If I had a patient as ill as I am, and he said: 'May 
I go out on a mountain-side among snow fields, walk 
on slushy paths, climb hundreds of ice-cold stone 
steps, stand around draughty, windy temples, sit 
down occasionally on a frozen board, and take off my 
shoes, and walk about in slippers for a half -hour, and 
then put congealed shoes on my frosted feet?' I'd 
reply: 'You belong in Kirkbride's.' " 



<m> J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

Fortunately the "distant sights," lakes, water- 
falls, and the like, were all iced over or snowed under, 
and the roads leading to them were impassable, so 
they were left out of the programme. 

The spring was well advanced when the travellers 
returned to their native land, and to their native 
town. There was a noisy demonstration of welcome 
at the Pennsylvania station. Dr. Martin had staged 
the show, and had engaged a band, so that the home- 
coming was a little like a Roman triumph. The stu- 
dents cheered, the engines puffed, the band brayed 
and fluted, and the few words which Dr. White tried 
to say were lost in the uproar. It was an animated 
scene. 

The months that preceded the Great War were 
marked by unrest without prescience, and by a feel- 
ing of insecurity which had no sense of direction. In 
England, a wave of hysteria had swept women past 
the border line of sanity. They did strange deeds 
of violence, and their lawlessness was the childish 
and terrifying lawlessness of fanaticism. Among 
other pitiful and purposeless acts of destruction, they 
slashed Sargent's admirable portrait of Henry James, 
then hanging in the Royal Academy. Mr. James had 
written to Dr. White of his profound pleasure in this 
masterpiece, and of his desire to show it to his friend. 

"Yes, J. S. S. has finished the loveliest portrait of 
me, the loveliest, but one, he has ever painted of any 



FREEDOM 223 

mere male. It 's just done, and will be doubtless var- 
nished and framed by the time you come around to 
see it. I am quite ashamed to admire it as I do. 
It makes me feel as if I were smirking before the 
glass." 

The connection between a portrait painted by an 
American artist of an American novelist and the ex- 
tension of the British franchise was hard to trace. 
The picture was reported to be injured beyond re- 
demption, and the peculiar inconsequence of the 
crime deepened the anger and disgust which were felt 
on both sides of the Atlantic. Mr. James's regret over 
the "bloody gashes" was equalled by his delight 
when the canvas was so adroitly mended that not a 
cicatrice was visible. He was pleased, too, at the 
indignation expressed in the United States; and he 
suggested, with some show of reason, that the. sym- 
pathy of his countrymen might find fitting expression 
in a more generous purchase of his books. Sargent 
wrote to Dr. White, sending him a photograph of the 
portrait, and telling him that it would be hung in its 
old place as soon as the restoration was completed. 
"It looked hopeless," he added, "as if several bombs 
had burst through it; but now there is no trace of the 
damage." 

If Dr. White had not been the true Wandering 
Gentile, the summer of 1914 would have seen him 
recovering serenely from the excesses of his eight 



2M J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

months' journey, and contenting himself with coun- 
try life, — until the breaking of the war-cloud de- 
stroyed the contentment of the world. But his habits 
were too firmly fixed to admit a change. He did a 
thing because he had always done it; and as he had 
always spent a portion of his summer at St. Moritz 
and Menaggio, he could not conceive the possibility 
of passing these months elsewhere. "On account of 
the threatened European war we were a trifle uneasy 
about sailing," he writes July 31st, "but had no 
serious thought of any derangement of our plans." 
He and Mrs. White were actually in New York, 
ready to sail on the Princess Irene, and they waited 
four days before realizing that the ship would never 
put to sea. By August 3d all hopes of peace had 
vanished, and, on the 4th, the relentless travellers 
— determined to go somewhere — started for Can- 
ada and Alaska. For over a month they pursued the 
beauties of nature at Banff, or dawdled through mo- 
notonous days on Alaskan waters, while, at home, 
men waited tensely hour by hour for news which, 
when it came, filled all hearts with apprehension. 
They were at Sitka the day that Aerschot was bar- 
barously sacked; they watched a "panorama of 
mountains and forests" while the Germans entered 
Liege; they had reached Seattle when Lou vain was 
fired. News came to them tardily, or not at all. They 
might have been sleeping beauties in the wood, so 



FREEDOM 225 

remote they seemed from a world seething with hor- 
rors, and hatreds, and crimes which cried out to 
Heaven for vengeance. It was not until they returned 
home on the 12th of September that Dr. White awoke 
to the full and bitter realization of what was happen- 
ing in Europe. From that hour until death struck 
him, he never ceased to work with all the vigour 
of his resolute nature for outraged civilization and 
humanity. 



CHAPTER XI 
THE GREAT WAR 

THE heart," says Lord Shaftesbury, "cannot re- 
main neutral, but takes part constantly one way 
or the other." Individual neutrality was to Dr. White 
a form of mental and moral cowardice. He held that 
no rational being has a right to plead ignorance when 
knowledge is attainable, or to be indifferent to mat- 
ters of right and wrong. Despite a temporary irrita- 
tion at England's behaviour in the complicated busi- 
ness of the Panama Canal, his sympathies had always 
been soundly British and democratic. He could never 
have ranged himself with Imperial Germany, or with 
Austria, steeped to the lips in crime. The ultimatum 
to Serbia seemed to him the epitome of bullying; 
and the grossness with which the Central Powers 
disturbed the peace of Europe angered him, as it an- 
gered all law-abiding men. But it was the invasion 
of Belgium, and the ferocity of Germany's campaign 
in that unhappy land, which changed him from a 
moderate to an extreme partisan of the Allies. He was 
like a man who knows that behind closed doors a 
child is being butchered, a woman is being violated, 
and who cannot break through and interpose. To ask 
such a one to be neutral in deed is to cripple his man- 



THE GREAT WAR 227 

hood; to ask him to be neutral in thought is to bid 
him be accessory to sin. 

Two things were made clear from the start to this 
acute, though not dispassionate, observer. He knew 
that the war was the greatest moral issue ever pre- 
sented to a quibbling world; and he knew that it was 
from its first inception a logical and consistent ex- 
pression of Germany's national creed. He saw it one 
and indivisible in every fresh development. The 
curious process by which the Teuton's warm apolo- 
gists became in time half-hearted opponents had for 
him neither sense nor sincerity. He did not separate 
a conformable and harmonious whole into jarring 
phases. The sinking of the Lusitania, — Germany's 
whip-lash across our nation's face, the surpassing 
insolence of Count von Bernstorff and other officials, 
left him unchanged. He needed no fresh proof of 
German malevolence because he had never sought 
to deceive his own soul. 

The amiable illusion of a good German people, 
misruled and misrepresented by a bad Prussian mili- 
tarism, is, and has always been, foundationless. 
There was no class in Germany untainted by na- 
tional avarice. One and all they were eager for the 
spoils of war. One and all they stood ready to defend 
any method by which these spoils might be secured. 
The German professors who lied glibly for their 
Kaiser, the German clergy who preached his bloody 



228 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

doctrine from their pulpits, the German socialists 
who bent their supple knees, the German tradesmen 
and artisans from whose serried ranks no word of 
protest ever issued, the German women who shamed 
their sex by coarse insults to wounded prisoners, — 
what was there to condone in this nation-wide guilt? 
Dr. White wasted no sentiment upon a people who, 
if they had not ordered the war, gave to its every 
crime their full concurrence. He fought with the 
weapons at his command the poisonous propaganda 
tolerated and encouraged in the United States during 
the first months of the contest. The hectoring tone 
adopted by German- Americans, their threats, their 
treachery, and their violence, wounded his pride, 
and outraged his sense of decency. That they should 
have held us to be capable of cowardice, and incapa- 
ble of understanding, was a double-barrelled affront 
he could never bring himself to pardon. 

His first ardent hope was that he might be per- 
mitted to raise a corps of American surgeons who 
would work in the Allied ranks. He wrote to Dr. 
— now Sir William — Osier, and to the French 
ambassador, M. Jusserand, proffering his services. 
Pending their replies, he busied himself in prepar- 
ing his "Primer of the War for Americans," and in 
collecting funds for the Louvain professors, who, 
after the destruction of their University and of their 
homes, had fled to England, and found a temporary 



THE GREAT WAR 

refuge in Oxford. Osier had written to him early in 
October, begging him to interest himself in these 
victims of German barbarity. "We have here now 
seven or eight Belgian professors and their families. 
Many of them are charming people, and some are 
destitute. If you can squeeze a few hundred dollars 
out of any of your friends, we shall be much obliged." 

Dr. WThite squeezed five thousand dollars with 
such amazing ease and rapidity that the first cheque 
reached Oxford on October 28th. By that time the 
number of professors had increased to fifteen, and 
there were twenty more in Cambridge. The Rocke- 
feller Foundation proffered help. "WTiat an angel 
you are!" Osier wrote his friend. "It is perfectly 
splendid. I wish you could look in here, and see how 
comfortably Grace [Lady Osier] and young Mrs. 
Max Muller have settled these people. Our house is 
nothing but a junk shop. We have packing cases 
arriving every week, and our drawing-room is now 
a sewing-room for the wives of the professors, most 
of whom are making baby clothes. They are an 
extraordinary lot." 

So many cares and labours engrossed the great 
Canadian doctor's time, and so many difficulties 
beset his path, that it was a relief to turn to Dr. 
White for sympathy and support. "I am trying to 
stir up the anti-typhoid inoculation," he wrote in 
October, "and have been addressing open-air meet- 



230 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

ings of the men in camps. I wish you could have seen 
us at the King Edward Horse Camp, near Slough. I 
spoke to the soldiers from beside a big oak tree, they 
sitting about on the ground, and afterwards all the 
officers were inoculated as an example. Those sons of 
Belial, the 'antis,' have been preaching against it." 

In November Dr. White went to Washington to 
receive an honorary fellowship in the American Col- 
lege of Surgeons. It was the only break in a breath- 
less month. He was working hard on his "Primer of 
the War for Americans," and harder still to raise 
money and collect supplies for the Philadelphia ward 
of the American Ambulance Hospital in Paris. The 
"Primer" was published in early December. In his 
brief preface to this brief handbook he stated that 
he began it to clarify his own thoughts, to ascertain 
distinctly his own convictions, and his reasons for 
cherishing them. Twelve plain questions are plainly 
answered. "Wherever my answers have involved 
matters of fact, I have taken pains to attain accu- 
racy. When they have related to matters of opinion, I 
have endeavoured to give the basis for such opin- 
ions." 

The book, with its many apt and illustrative quo- 
tations, is clear, incisive, and systematic. Germany 
has been, from start to finish, so amazingly liberal in 
furnishing evidence against herself, she has talked so 
loudly and so blatantly, that she can be, and has 



THE GREAT WAR 231 

been, condemned out of her own mouth. 1 Dr. White's 
brochure is in no wise comparable to such masterly 
arraignments as "The Evidence in the Case," and 
" The War and Humanity," works of weight and elo- 
quence, which made clear to thousands of American 
readers the tortuous diplomacy of the Central Powers, 
and the depth and breadth of their brutality. Its 
author had neither Mr. Beck's knowledge of inter- 
national law, nor his skill in marshalling arguments; 
but he made his appeal in straightforward, manly 
fashion to the decency and justice of a world which 
had witnessed the supreme f rightfulness of vandalism. 
The "Primer" was well received by the American 
press, upon which Dr. Wfhite placed an unshaken 
reliance, went through three American editions, had 
a fair sale in England, and was translated into five 
languages by the Publicity Committee of the British 
Foreign Office. That it made its way to remote allies 
is evidenced by a long and able review which ap- 
peared in the "North-China Daily News," printed 
in Shanghai, February 2d. Two weeks after its pub- 
lication, Dr. Wlrite was at work on "Germany and 
Democracy," a reply to the amazing statements of 
Dr. Dernburg, one of the most active and vociferous 
members of the Kaiser's "foreign legion." It seems 
incredible now that these publicists, press agents, 
and professors, so liberally paid to undermine the 

1 William Roscoe Thayer: Out of Their own Mouths. 



J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

honour and honesty of the United States, should 
have been encouraged to spread their propaganda 
throughout the land. Many of them were plotting 
shamelessly against our trade and our safety, and 
some succeeded in doing us grievous harm; but a 
credulous and bewildered people could not be 
brought to believe in such duplicity. Herr Heinrich 
Friedrich Albert told us strange tales of Belgian in- 
humanity to Germans. Dr. Dernburg, relying too 
securely on our ignorance, told us of France's viola- 
tion of Belgium's neutrality, and of her attempted 
invasion of the Fatherland. What wonder that in 
this monde bestourne there were men who did not 
know whether the wolf was eating the lamb, or the 
lamb was eating the wolf; whether St. George or the 
dragon was defending assaulted humanity. M. Jus- 
serand pointed out in a very amusing letter to Dr. 
White the discrepancies in two of Dr. Dernburg's 
articles which were published simultaneously. The 
worthy Teuton did not mind giving himself the lie. 
It was part of his profound contempt for the intelli- 
gence of the American periodicals which sought his 
words, and of the American public which read them. 
Dr. White wrote the pamphlet, "Germany and 
Democracy," wholly and entirely that he might 
have the pleasure of proving Dr. Dernburg's men- 
dacity. He called in my help, and I was glad to give 
it; but the speed and fury with which he worked left 



THE GREAT WAR 233 

a collaborator toiling far behind. It was my first in- 
timate acquaintance with his literary methods. He 
wrote three fourths of the pamphlet rather than 
wait for me to do my share. I could no more have 
kept pace with him in composition than I could have 
climbed a mountain by his side. 

His championship of France and England won him 
many enemies. Hyphenated Americans and pacifists 
united in assailing him, and agitated ladies wrote 
letters to newspapers, deploring the violence of his 
language. Ex-Governor Pennypacker, a warm sym- 
pathizer with Germany's aims and methods, criti- 
cised him bitterly in an address to the German So- 
ciety of Pennsylvania, and the audience howled its 
reprobation every time his name was mentioned. A 
Germanic Sherlock Holmes divulged this dreadful 
secret: "I hear from good authority that Professor 
White is the closest friend of Lord Treuves, the phy- 
sician of King George, and visits him frequently. 
Now may I ask Professor WTiite what it was worth 
to him to be persuaded by his friends, George and 
Treuves, to stir up Americans by false and lying 
misstatements? May I ask what was the price?" 

So persistent was this abuse that it became one of 
Dr. Martin's cherished pastimes to call his friend up 
on the telephone, and in guttural German accents, 
which deceived the listener for a moment, threaten 
him with dire retribution. "The Little Brothers of 



234 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

Germany," to use a phrase of Mr. Chapman's, were 
so loud-voiced in 1915 that one wonders their silence 
in 1917 did not choke them. Month after month an 
ever-increasing list of savageries made more difficult 
their defence of the fatherland. The wisest of them 
fell back once and for all upon the solid support of 
General von Disfurth's pronouncement: "Germany 
stands as the supreme arbiter of her own methods, 
which must be dictated to the world." 

From Henry James, to whom Dr. White had sent 
the pamphlets, came an incandescent letter of de- 
light and relief. "With passion I desire that those 
who surround you should range themselves intel- 
ligently on the side of civilization and humanity 
against the most monstrous menace that has ever, 
since the birth of time, gathered strength for an 
assault upon the liberties, the decencies, the pieties 
and fidelities, the whole liberal, genial, many-sided 
energy of our race." 

Sargent, painting tranquilly in the Dolomites 
when the war-bomb burst upon the world, had been 
caught without passport, without money, and with 
"every symptom of being a spy." He made his diffi- 
cult way back to England; and James wrote to Dr. 
White in the early spring that a noble desire to be of 
service had driven the emancipated painter back to 
the work he had forsaken. 

"You will no doubt have seen how, at a great 



THE GREAT WAR 235 

auction-sale of artistic treasures sent by the benev- 
olent for conversion into Red Cross money, Sir Hugh 
Lane bid two thousand pounds for an empty canvas 
of John's, to be covered by the latter with the portrait 
of a person chosen by Lane. What a luxury to be able 
to resolve one's genius into so splendid a donation! 
It is n't known yet who is to be the paintee, but that's 
a comparatively insignificant detail." 

On March 4th, Dr. W^ite was able to announce 
that he would sail in June with the surgeons, physi- 
cians, and nurses chosen from the staff of the Uni- 
versity of Pennsylvania to take charge of the hundred 
and eighty beds consigned to their care in the Amer- 
ican Ambulance Hospital in Paris. His first plan of 
raising a corps of army surgeons had been frustrated 
by the reluctance of the Allied Powers, of France 
especially, to admit the American doctors into their 
service. He therefore turned his time and attention 
to the one hospital he coul^l help, and which was 
always in need of assistance. A month before his 
public announcement, he wrote to Tom Robins that 
the generous response of the public kept pace with all 
demands. 

"We have now opened a Philadelphia ward of 
forty beds in the American Ambulance Hospital in 
Paris — the very best ward hospital in Europe — 
and have the money to support it for six months. We 
are trying to get enough money for a year, and are 



236 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

within $7000 of it. The fund for the University 
representation must, however, be entirely separate, 
as people of all affiliations, including some of the 
Jefferson men, have been active in raising the general 
fund. 

"Pennsylvania must do, not only good work, but 
work which will compare well with whatever is done 
by the Western Reserve and by Harvard. Dr. Crile 
is over there now with an entire floor of a hundred 
and fifty beds under his care. He took with him a 
party of twelve, at a cost of eleven or twelve thousand 
dollars. His term of service includes January, Feb- 
ruary and March. Harvard has secured April, May 
and June. I accepted in behalf of Pennsylvania for 
July, August and September, trusting that in some 
way I should secure the funds. 

"Jim Hutchinson will go and take his assistant. I 
shall pay my expenses, and Jim will pay his; but the 
younger men and the nurses, while willing to give 
their services, and run whatever risk there is about 
it, have no money to spend on themselves." 

On the 8th of May came word of the sinking of the 
Lusitania. It was an event which harmonized with 
Germany's avowed principles, and fulfilled her avowed 
intentions. She went as mad with delight when the 
deed was done as if it had been dauntless and danger- 
ous. The immediate result in Great Britain was a 
hardening of the national fibre, a conviction that it 



THE GREAT WAR 237 

was better to die fighting than to yield to a power 
capable of such inhumanity. In the United States, 
German- American societies, and their affiliated Irish- 
American societies, received the news with delight, 
and cheered the drowning of American women and 
children. Pacifists, like Henry Ford, sprang to speech, 
assuring us we had nothing to resent. We were 
officially bidden to be calm. Twelve months after 
the crime was committed, the American Rights 
Committee was refused permission to hold a Me- 
morial meeting in New York. It seemed for a time 
as though the dead were dishonoured by our indif- 
ference, as though Germany were right in her calcula- 
tion that we would take her blow kneeling. Yet none 
the less that wholesale and cowardly murder of 
noncombatants was her death-warrant. Americans 
neither forgot nor forgave. There smouldered in the 
heart of the nation a fire which gave little out- 
ward token of its intensity, but which slowly and 
steadily burned its way to the surface, and burst 
into a flame that purified the land. 

To Dr. White, this supreme act of piracy was the 
natural and inevitable outcome of all that had gone 
before. When Dr. William H. Furness wrote to him: 
"Don't you believe that now, with the sinking of the 
Lusitania, we can say, as did my grandfather when 
Fort Sumter was fired on, 'The long agony is over'?" 
he had no answer to give. The agony was eating into 



J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

his soul. Every month that Germany was suffered to 
flaunt her foulness in the face of civilization was a 
month of painful endurance. Like many other Amer- 
icans, he sought what comfort he could find in the 
hardest of hard work. As the sailing of the University 
contingent drew near, he had no hour which he could 
rightly call his own; but when he was urged to pre- 
pare a new and enlarged edition of the "Primer," 
which should deal with more recent conditions and 
events, he took up the task, and toiled at it day and 
night with that concentrated intensity which so per- 
ilously consumed his strength. 

The "Text-Book of the War for Americans" is a 
closely printed volume of five hundred pages, show- 
ing signs of the haste with which it was compiled, 
and lacking the coherence of the earlier pamphlet. 
Its heaped-up evidence makes it valuable as a book 
of reference. Its transparent honesty, the hatred for 
cruelty, and contempt for cowardice, which kindled 
every page, gave it weight in that sad season of doubt 
and indecision. It was one of the forces which helped 
to strengthen our sense of moral obligation, and 
prompted us to the great sacrifice. 

Having launched this last offensive against Ger- 
man barbarism, Dr. White's whole attention was 
turned to his approaching departure. For the first 
time in twenty-seven years he was to sail without 
Mrs. White, believing that conditions were too 



THE GREAT WAR 239 

dangerous to warrant a woman's crossing the sea 
unless she had definite and useful work to do. It was 
a sane and unselfish decision, because he knew that 
he wanted her companionship; but what he did not 
know was how much he was going to want it as the 
solitary months sped by. To all reporters and news- 
paper men he made this clear statement: "I should 
like it fully understood that Dr. James P. Hutchin- 
son is assuming the chief responsibility for operative 
work. As a surgeon, I am now a back number. More- 
over I have tasks to do in England this summer, and 
at home next autumn. I shall therefore return when 
I have been of all possible use, leaving the ward in 
the exceptionally able hands of Dr. Hutchinson." 

The surgeons sailed June 12th, on the St. Louis. 
Dr. White's diary bears testimony to the compre- 
hensive dirt and discomfort of the ship, as well as 
to the intelligence and friendliness of the passengers. 
There were several Canadian officers on board, and 
they gave him the benefit of their experiences. One 
of them told him he had seen the body of a two-year- 
old Belgian child, a little girl, pierced by a lance, and 
hung naked on a meat-hook in a butcher's window. 
The incident was no worse than countless other in- 
cidents in Germany's campaign. It was not so bad 
as many things that happened daily. But Dr. White 
loved children, and the image of that little brutalized 
body, exposed as a legitimate joke to appreciative 



240 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

German eyes, destroyed his peace of mind. He wrote 
about it in a white heat of grief and rage to Effingham 
Morris. He never forgot it while he lived. 

The week spent in London was crowded with 
social happenings. "Of course I had lots of old 
friends here," wrote the doctor to Provost Smith, 
"but now I seem to have hundreds of new ones." 
He lunched with Mr. and Mrs. Asquith, and warmly 
admired General Henderson, Chief of the British 
Aviation Corps, who was one of the guests. He dined 
with Anthony Hope, and was amused, though not 
unduly dazzled, by Mr. Wells. He dined with Mr. 
Fisher Unwin, who was publishing the English 
edition of the "Text-Book," and spent a burning 
hour in discussing the Lusitania with Sir Sidney Lee. 
More happily he dined with Sargent and Henry 
James, and the three friends had what James called 
"a perfect orgy of indiscretion." Sargent wrote to 
Mrs. White, assuring her he was looking after her 
"absconding husband" to the best of his ability, 
though it was no easy matter to keep track of any 
one so popular. James wrote to her that he also was 
engaged in this pious duty, and was fulfilling it 
"with a zeal and tenderness which you and Miss 
Repplier rolled into one could n't surpass. . . . Wil- 
liam has done more than he came for," added this 
affectionate chronicler, "and his ability and effect 
will now be splendidly enhanced. He is the delight 



THE GREAT WAR 241 

of our circle, besides being that of other circles in 
which we do not presume to feel that we move." 

Those were dark days for the Allies. Germany was 
putting forth her utmost strength, and displaying 
her utmost ruthlessness. Her arrogance kept even 
pace with her resourcefulness. She challenged the 
civilized world to stay her hand. Dr. White, temper- 
amentally hopeful, but beset by heavy fears, was 
strengthened in spirit by this visit to England, and 
by the tenacity of purpose he beheld on every side. 
He summed up his convictions the night before his 
departure in the following characteristic paragraph: 

"I am leaving London, depressed as to the im- 
mediate outcome of the war, but not as to its final 
results. The British are still making mistakes. Some 
of them — not a few — are hardly awake yet to their 
own danger. But they are all splendid in one thing. 
They don't brag or blow about it. They don't talk 
about it much. But they have n't the slightest idea 
of being beaten finally. They intend to win if they 
have to finish the war ten years from now, and alone. 
They believe (as they have a right to believe) in the 
justice of their cause. They believe (as they have a 
right to believe) that they and their Allies are fight- 
ing, not their own battles only, but the battles of 
every civilized nation, of every real democracy. They 
think, though they don't say it in so many words, 
that this moral supremacy over their enemies, this 



242 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

innermost consciousness that they are defending 
humanity at large, is bound to have more and more 
weight as time goes on, and that it will sooner or 
later become overwhelming in its influence." 

In Paris, Dr. White spent most of his time at the 
American Ambulance Hospital. It was inevitable 
that he should now regret (as Treves had bitterly 
regretted) his retirement from surgical practice. "I 
wish I had n't stopped operating some years ago," 
he wrote to Mr. Edward B. Smith. "I make myself 
of what use I can, and I try to preserve my self- 
respect by remembering that I assumed at once the 
responsibility for accepting the offer to come over, 
that I effected the organization, and — with your 
help — the financing of this unit." 

His admiration for the bearing of the wounded 
soldiers was unbounded. That brilliant playwright, 
Hubert Henry Davies, who nursed for months in a 
London Hospital, recorded his conviction that "the 
nearest thing on earth to an angel is the British 
Tommy." Dr. White stood ready to say as much for 
the Poilu. "Men and officers," he wrote to Mr. Smith, 
"I never saw such a cheerful, contented, hopeful lot. 
Some of them shot half to pieces, but never a grumble 
or complaint. It's wonderful. Their chief anxiety 
seems to be to get back to the front again." 

The diary bears the same testimony to this un- 
varying heroism. "A finer, more uncomplaining, 



THE GREAT WAR 243 

more cheerful lot of men I've never seen. They really 
are splendid, and their readiness to go back to that 
Hell from which they have escaped with their bare 
lives is amazing." 

The hospital itself satisfied all the requirements of 
this exacting critic. He has nothing but praise for 
surgeons, doctors, nurses, and attendants. "I am 
glad," he wrote, "to have something that, as an 
American, I can be proud of. We are now settled and 
hard at work, with a hundred and eighty to two hun- 
dred wounded in our care. The organization of our 
unit is excellent. I have no fear but that the results 
will compare favourably with those of preceding 
units." 

To Thomas Robins he repeats the same enthu- 
siasms and the same regrets. "The hospital takes a 
large part of each day, though I do no real surgical 
work, and sometimes feel like a senile, decrepit, dod- 
dering old ass, who ought to be dozing away my last 
days in Philadelphia, instead of being here where 
everything is war, war, war. But it's fine, — and the 
finest thing of all is the cheerfulness, and optimism, 
and unquenchable ardour of the poor fellows who 
have been shot to pieces. They never grumble, and 
they all want to get back to the front." 

The five Philadelphia wards, with eight and ten 
beds in each ward, gave him especial satisfaction. He 
has much to say of their inmates. One of them was a 



244 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

young French surgeon with the rank of lieutenant. 
He had been tending the wounded during a bombard- 
ment, and heard the groans of a Zouave lying, hurt 
and helpless, in No Man's Land. He called for vol- 
unteer stretcher-bearers, and went to the rescue 
under a Red Cross flag, which immediately drew a 
well-directed fire from the enemy (a Red Cross is to 
a German what a red scarf is to a bull), with the re- 
sult that the Zouave and the four bearers were killed, 
and the surgeon badly wounded. He managed to 
crawl back to shelter, and was then wearing the 
croix de guerre, as a reward of his fruitless valour. 

There were weekly entertainments at the hospital 
for the amusement of convalescents, and the array 
of talent they presented was rich in variety. On one 
occasion Dr. White heard the baritone of a Buenos 
Aires Opera company, some French actresses from 
the Opera Comique, and Anna Held, who sang " Tip- 
per ary " three times because the wounded men could 
not get enough of it, but begged for it again and 
again. 

When not in the hospital, the doctor wandered 
about his old haunts in Paris, went to some public 
dinners, heard some amazingly dull speeches (he 
failed to understand how they could be so dull under 
such circumstances), and spent a few happy hours 
with Edith Wharton. Their mutual affection for 
Henry James, their mutual admiration for Theodore 



THE GREAT WAR 245 

Roosevelt, gave them grounds for sympathy; and to 
find his views so keenly and comprehensively shared 
by this most distinguished of American women was 
a very great delight to her compatriot. 

Two things he ardently desired, two favours he 
asked and obtained. He was permitted to make an 
ascent in a French military biplane (an experience 
less common then than now), and he was permitted 
to visit "the front." For the first adventure he was 
consigned to the care of M. Caudron, constructeur 
d? aeroplanes, who professed his pleasure at being 
able to oblige so good a friend of the Allies and of 
Mr. Roosevelt. A biplane was placed at his service, a 
young pilot was assigned to him, a heavy coat, a cap 
and goggles were lent him, and in a driving storm he 
circled Paris, and flew up and down the Seine. "I 
never did want to be a chauffeur, but I certainly 
should like to be an aviator," he writes in the diary; 
"and if I could drop a few bombs on the Rhine 
bridges, and the Krupp Works, and Potsdam, and 
Unter den Linden, it would be delirious happiness." 

On the 20th of July he visited Rheims, then under 
heavy bombardment, and, as it chanced, he had the 
benefit of a particularly lively morning. In an hour 
and a half, more than five hundred shells, costing at 
an easy estimate nine thousand dollars, were rained 
upon the town. "Every few seconds there would be 
a dull roar, then almost instantly the scream or 



246 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

shriek of a shell overhead, and then another closer 
shattering roar, as it struck and exploded. Some- 
times there was no shriek between the first — dis- 
tant — roar, and the second — close — one. This 
meant that the shell was a No. 130 (130 millimetres 
in diameter) which is the smallest the Huns usually 
employ, and which goes at so high a velocity that it 
reaches its aim and bursts, before the sound it makes 
in the air has time to strike the ear. The 150 and 210 
millimetres do not travel so fast." 

By afternoon the firing ceased, and Dr. White was 
given an opportunity to see the havoc it had wrought. 
The devastated Cathedral had been, as usual, the 
principal target for the guns. The centre window of 
one of the chapels in the apse, the third from the 
south transept, had been blown in. The altar lay 
crumbled into fragments. There was a hole four feet 
deep and ten feet in diameter in the Cathedral yard. 
The buildings that surrounded it had sunk more com- 
pletely into ruin. Throughout the city there were 
rubble heaps that had been homes at sunrise. A 
dozen townspeople, most of them women, lay dead 
under humble roofs. Nine thousand dollars' worth 
of frightfulness had done its appointed work. 

A week later Dr. WTiite went to Boulogne, then in 
the war zone, where he had permission to remain for 
several days, and where he was the only civilian in 
the hotel. The second day, Colonel Sir George Makins 



' THE GREAT WAR 247 

motored him to St. Omer, the headquarters of the 
British army, which was being intermittently shelled, 
and to the Clearing Hospital, No. 10 (in Belgium), 
where he saw some three hundred men — shot and 
burned — who had been brought in from the field 
hospitals that morning. The desire of his heart was 
to get into Ypres, but there seemed little likelihood 
of its fulfilment, until by rare good fortune he en- 
countered Captain R. J. C. Thompson, "ex-football 
player, ex-officer in the Egyptian army, and a good 
fellow without any ex," who was in command of a 
motor ambulance convoy, and who promised that, 
if the doctor would dine and spend the night at the 
farm which was his headquarters, he would motor 
him into Ypres at dusk. 

The alacrity with which this offer was accepted 
can be well imagined. It was a "hot night," — not 
so registered by the thermometer, but in the British 
lines, where an attack upon the enemy's trenches 
was under way. Sir George and Major Irvine accom- 
panied Captain Thompson and Dr. White; and the 
party reached Ypres in time to see by the waning 
light that picture of uttermost desolation. There were 
ruined streets, and the battered walls of the Ca- 
thedral, and broken bits of masonry that had once 
been part of the incomparably beautiful Cloth Hall, 
marked by the Germans (as they marked the Ca- 
thedral of Rheims) for complete destruction. Shells 



248 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

whizzed above their heads, and one of them bursting 
perilously close, showered dirt and rubble over the 
incautious visitors. "If Ypres ever again becomes a 
city," wrote Dr. White, "it will have to be rebuilt as 
completely as if no town had ever stood there. How 
many hundreds of thousands of shells it took to 
accomplish this demolition, only God and the Huns 
know. They'll probably say they fired six shells to 
dislodge a Belgian observer from the roof of the Ca- 
thedral." 

After making this melancholy round, the doctor 
was taken to the nearest field hospital, where sadder 
sights awaited him. The fight was going on between 
Ypres and Hooge; and all night long came an endless 
file of wounded British soldiers, some unconscious 
on stretchers, some hideously burned by liquid fire 
(Germany's latest invention), some walking feebly. 
"One chap, who ought himself to have been tenderly 
and carefully carried, had the arm of another, worse 
hurt, around his neck, the two of them barely "able to 
crawl." All were indomitable, uncomplaining, brave, 
cheerful, and grateful. "Think of a poor fellow with 
his head bound up in a blood-stained bandage, a 
hand and arm riddled with shell splinters, his face 
so covered with clotted blood mixed with dirt that 
it looked like a mask, — think of that man wait- 
ing his turn to be dressed, and actually grinning as 
he said: 'Our artillery are doin' fine. They've got 



THE GREAT WAR 249 

the range of their trenches to a foot. Every time one 
of our shells struck, I saw four or five of the swine 
goin' up in the air, and in pieces, too.' — I could 
have kissed him, blood and dirt and all." 

For hours and hours Dr. White stayed in that field 
hospital, admiring the speed and precision with 
which the British surgeons did their work, the order 
and cleanliness which reigned in such rough quarters, 
the unvarying heroism of the wounded. And every 
hour his desire to help grew stronger. It was dreadful 
to stand there idle, while those other men, worn and 
spent, saw the work ahead of them exceed their ut- 
most powers. Finally he could bear it no longer, and 
made a tentative offer of his services. But it might 
not be. Even in those cruel straits, even in that wel- 
ter of blood and agony, red tape bound the official 
world. Dr. Hays, the surgeon in charge, grinned 
pleasantly, but would accept no aid; and Sir George 
explained later that to have done so "would have 
been subversive of discipline and a bad precedent." 
"I understand, and agree as to principle," wrote Dr. 
White wistfully; "but I think that if I could have 
gotten to work, I might have helped to save some 
lives." 

By the 4th of August he was back in London, and 
attended the great anniversary service at St. Paul's, 
objecting characteristically to the sermon preached 
by the Archbishop of Canterbury, because it was 



250 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

"mixed up with religion." On the 7th he went to Sir 
William Osier's at Oxford. There was a houseful of 
guests of various nationalities, but not a neutral soul 
among them; and the talk had a quality of insight, and 
a sustained intensity of feeling, which suited his own 
angry and heroic mood. The only amusing thing he 
had to relate was a story told him by Osier of King 
Edward showing a photograph of himself to Lord 
Salisbury, and asking, "What do you think of that?" 
Salisbury, always unobservant and absent-minded, 
regarded it with a pitying eye. " Poor old Buller ! " he 
said, " I wonder if he really is as stupid as he looks." 
One task Dr. White set himself to perform in Eng- 
land. Henry James had asked for British citizenship, 
and, believing the matter to be of no interest or 
concern to the public, had declined, save for a few 
lines to the "Times," to give any reasons for his 
action. He would not even discuss the subject among 
friends, being always reticent about his own af- 
fairs. The doctor, however, felt that some statement 
should be made, and as nothing would induce Mr. 
James to make it, he valiantly asked for and ob- 
tained permission to send a communication to the 
"Spectator." In this brief analysis he outlined the 
events of the past year, the repeated violation of 
American rights by Germany, the repeated insults 
and injuries suffered by Americans at the hands of a 
nation which took a brutal delight in flouting them. 



THE GREAT WAR 251 

It was, he asserted, no lack of loyalty to American 
ideals which had actuated Mr. James, but a desire 
to line up with the fighting people, with those who 
were doing their level best to save an assaulted world. 
It was his sense of individual responsibility in a great 
moral crisis, when every man must stand for right or 
wrong. The "Spectator" printed Dr. White's com- 
mentary without elimination, and added a line of its 
own, courteous, temperate, and sane. Sargent wrote to 
Mrs. WTiite that he was glad the word which needed 
to be said had been well said. Mr. James maintained 
a suave silence. There was no need for him to speak. 
On August 20th that venerable dining-club, the 
"Kinsmen," gave a dinner in honour of Dr. White, — 
a brilliant affair, although the chairman, Sir Sidney 
Lee, had forgotten a number of people who should 
have been asked, and had given wrong dates to 
others. The men of letters who had succeeded in 
being present were full of friendly feeling for their 
guest. There were but three speeches, Sir Sidney's, 
Dr. White's, and a very good one from Sir Alfred 
Keogh, Surgeon-General of the British Army. What- 
ever pleasure Dr. White might have had in the enter- 
tainment was hopelessly marred by the news which 
had just reached London of the shameful sinking of 
the Arabic. She was an unarmed ship, westward 
bound, carrying civilians only, and no munitions. 
She was torpedoed without notice, and sank in eleven 



252 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

minutes. Two Americans were reported to be missing. 
What wonder that the American who sat at an Eng- 
lish board was heavy of heart and speech. His coun- 
trymen at home were every whit as sorrowful. 

Upon one point he was determined. The sinking of 
the Arabic should not prevent him from returning, 
as he had planned, on the Adriatic. The St. Paul 
sailed the same day; but, apart from the fact that 
his experience of the St. Louis had inspired him with 
a reasonable distaste for the American line, he felt 
very keenly that to change his ship would be a per- 
sonal surrender of his principles, and of his just de- 
mands. Mr. Bryan's advice to Americans, to avoid 
the risk of British vessels, rankled in his breast. He 
hated everything which could be construed into sub- 
mission to Germany's insolent dictates. "It seems 
to me," he writes in the diary, "that it is now the 
duty of Americans, if they are unaccompanied by 
women and children, to insist on the rights of safe 
travel at sea on merchant ships. These rights their 
country should secure for them. Every man who does 
so insist is, to that extent, an example to others." 

The Adriatic would have been a rich haul for sub- 
marines. Sir Robert Borden, Premier of Canada, 
General Sir Sam Hughes, Minister of Militia and 
Defence, Sir Herbert Holt, President of the Royal 
Bank of Canada, and Colonel Carrick were among 
the passengers. There was also a "dear little Cana- 



THE GREAT WAR 253 

dian girl of three" for Dr. White to play with. 
The child's father was in command of a cavalry 
regiment. Her baby brother and her grandmother 
had been lost on the Lusitania. With such com- 
panions, and with the creature comforts which, it 
must be confessed, the doctor valued highly, the 
voyage was a singularly agreeable one. He was glad 
to be nearing home. The summer had been brimful 
of honours and adventures ("bombarded towns, and 
toppling houses, and shells blazing all around me 
were new and thrilling experiences, ,, he wrote to 
Edward Smith) ; but there had also been lonely hours 
in which he knew too well what was wanting. The 
last page of his London diary contains a candid, and 
most unusual, avowal of error. 

"I made one mistake, — not bringing Letty with 
me. Against it, however, must be urged her freedom 
from all risk — especially now — and also the oppor- 
tunities I've had (which her affection might have 
prevented) of learning much from actual experience, 
which ought to make me able to think straighter, 
write better, and altogether be more useful to the 
cause as long as the war continues. That helps to 
balance the account, though it does n't console me 
in hours like these for her absence. If I had realized 
how much I should miss her, I'd have let her take 
all the risks and come along. So there's a frank con- 
fession of having, for once, been wrong." 



w 



CHAPTER XII 

THE END 

HEN Dr. White returned from this exciting 
and exhausting summer, he was, though he 
did not know it, an ill man. He was not prepared to 
make any concession to his increasing weakness and 
pain. He attributed them to fatigue, to exposure, to 
prolonged immersion in his swimming-pool during 
the warm September days, to rheumatism, to neu- 
ralgia, to any and everything except the ineradica- 
ble disease which his physicians recognized, but were 
unwilling to name. His courage was undaunted, his 
energies unclogged. It seems grotesque that, after 
his great experiences in Europe, his months of high 
adventure, he should have been immediately en- 
gulfed by an academic tempest which attracted more 
attention than it deserved, and consumed more time 
and strength than should have been wasted upon 
it. But anything to be done for the University of 
Pennsylvania was to him worth doing, and the Uni- 
versity had involved itself in a particularly lively 
row by summarily dismissing an instructor in the 
Wharton School of Finance, on the charge of in- 
cendiary language to his students. 

The incident gained importance from the fact that 



THE END 255 

faculties and alumni all over the country were sharply 
resenting the arbitrary measures of college presidents 
and trustees. The University was accused of sup- 
pressing academic freedom of speech. All the space 
in Philadelphia papers, which was not taken up by 
war news, was given over to earnest colloquies upon 
this little local cause celebre. The New York press 
devoted august attention to the matter. The "Trib- 
une" opined that scant confidence could be placed 
in the sincerity of a college which sought to muzzle 
its teachers. The "New Republic" likened Dr. Scott 
Nearing (the inflammatory instructor) to Martin 
Luther, nailing his thesis to the church door. The 
"Sun," always inclined to skepticism, pointed out 
that, while the telling of unwelcome truths is right 
and praiseworthy, the presentation, as truths, of 
points which are open to doubt, is less deserving of 
esteem. "Life" was of the opinion that a salaried 
official is bound by the conditions of his employment, 
and that a man who desires untrammelled liberty of 
speech ought not to hire himself out to an organized 
institution with a responsible directorate. 

Echoes of this commotion had reached Dr. White 
in Paris, and he confided both to his diary and to 
Thomas Robins that the episode was assuming "pre- 
posterous proportions." He doubted the wisdom of 
the dismissal, and he doubted the wisdom of the 
dismissed. When he returned home, and was called 



256 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

upon to defend his assaulted Alma Mater, he found 
himself in a curious and difficult position. He was, 
and he had been all his life, enamoured of free speech. 
He was, and he had been all his life, intolerant of 
foolish talk. He had no respect for orthodoxy, but a 
great deal for the settled order of society. He loved 
bold and outspoken views, but he valued common 
sense above all things. It was a divided allegiance. 

For these reasons, perhaps, there is an unwonted 
gentleness in his vindication of the trustees, pub- 
lished in the "Old Penn Weekly Review." Like 
Carlyle, he was always disposed to stand for men 
rather than for measures; but he recognized that 
many of Dr. Nearing' s adherents stood for measures 
rather than for men. With them it was a matter of 
abstract principle, and they were wholly indifferent 
to the man who represented the principle they up* 
held. With him it was a matter of practical expe- 
diency, and all that concerned him was the fitness 
or unfitness of this particular man to be a teacher of 
youth. 

Dr. Nearing had announced that, having served 
three weeks on a jury, he had left the panel with his 
faith in courts and the law "utterly destroyed." This 
was to Dr. WTiite a matter of no moment. He did not 
care a rap what Dr. Nearing believed or disbelieved, 
nor by what process of elimination he had reached 
his conclusions; but he objected to the immature 



THE END 257 

student mind being muddled with crude revolution- 
ism on the strength of this somewhat inconclusive 
evidence. Dr. Nearing's hostility to "private wealth" 
neither interested nor repelled him; but he failed to 
see its place, as a basis for instruction, in a School 
of Finance. 

The paper of ten thousand words, in which Dr. 
White analyzed and defended the action of the trus- 
tees, was the last piece of sustained work he ever did. 
Dr. Nearing was called to the University of Toledo, 
where he had a brief and stormy career. The entrance 
of the United States into the war tested him, as it 
tested better men, and proved of what metal he was 
made. He was indicted under the Espionage Act for 
obstructing government measures. The ranks of pro- 
German pacifism opened to receive him, and in its 
friendly arms he found his comfort and support. 

Throughout the autumn, letters and reviews 
praising the English edition of the "Text-Book" 
followed Dr. White over the sea. The "Spectator" 
said truly that its author was, if not a leader, at least 
a "challenger of opinion." Lord Sydenham, who still 
cherished the generous vision of good Germans, un- 
tainted by militarism, dwelling in some unknown 
corner of the Fatherland, wrote that he hoped these 
blameless anchorites would read the "Text-Book," 
and be enlightened. Mr. James's congratulations 
related chiefly to the safe passage of the Adriatic, 



258 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

which had relieved his heart of a heavy load of care. 
"I see," he wrote, "the glory of your return only 
bedimmed a little by damnably dreary things; the 
Arabic, the Hesperian, the offensive ass of a Dumba, 
and the so zealously co-operating knave of a Bern- 
storff." 

At home, Dr. White was called upon so often to 
gratify public curiosity that he lived his life in a 
state of perpetual siege. Moreover, the Great War 
had brought to him, as to thousands of his country- 
men, new sets of sympathies and estrangements; it 
had made and unmade friendships and enmities. 
Nothing seemed the same, because nothing was the 
same, while Europe rocked in the blast. Social inter- 
course was dominated by this overwhelming fact. No 
other points of agreement or disagreement counted 
in the scale. 

Two years before the war, Dr. White, indignant at 
"Life's" travesties of the medical profession, and at 
its insistent vilification of Colonel Roosevelt, — whom 
it always pursued in a spirit of sustained hostility, — 
dropped his subscription, and refused to allow the 
paper to enter his house. He wrote to the editors a 
frank and not unfriendly letter, giving them his rea- 
sons for this step, and also his reasons for telling 
them why he took it. "I do not suppose," he said, 
"that either my subscription or my opinion is of 
any importance to you; but I have a feeling of regard 



THE END 259 

for 'Life' which leads me, in parting from it, to make 
some explanation, as I should do if — for what ap- 
peared to me a good cause — I decided to drop the 
acquaintance of a man who had once been a friend." 

"Life" published this letter with the following 
graceful comment: "On the contrary, the loss of an 
intelligent reader is always important to 'Life/ and 
doubly important when we lose an old friend be- 
cause of a difference of opinion." 

The years sped by, and the war was fourteen 
months old when Dr. White wrote again to "Life," 
asking that the quarrel should be made up. The 
paper's courageous unneutrality, its defence of hu- 
man and civilized justice, its unremitting attacks 
upon German propaganda, had won his heart. 
"Life," he said, might continue to call doctors 
quacks, and Colonel Roosevelt an impostor. He 
would summon his philosophy, and utter no word of 
protest. He would remain, even under such provo- 
cation, its enthusiastic admirer, and its grateful 
debtor. He asked humbly to be restored to the sub- 
scription list. After all, what did anything matter 
save the supreme struggle between right and wrong 
on the battle-fields of Europe? 

This letter established the last friendship of his life. 
Mr. Edward Sandford Martin answered it at length, 
admitting his own share of guilt, but claiming abso- 
lution, because events had remodelled his standards, 



260 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

as they had remodelled the standards of many honest 
men. All the staff of "Life," he said, were wild with 
enthusiasm over France (the paper's editorials had 
proved this much), and all were ready for war. They 
were even then planning the famous "John Bull" 
number, — a heartfelt, humorous, noble tribute to 
Britain's matchless valour. Mr. Martin's unshaken 
belief that the war would end, not only aright, but 
so very well as to have been worth its cost, was a 
tonic to Dr. White's mind, and balm to his soul. 
There was a power of vision in Mr. Martin which 
strengthened many minds and souls. Saint Michael 
could no more have doubted his final victory over 
Lucifer, Saint George could no more have doubted 
his final victory over the dragon, than this New York 
gentleman could have doubted the final victory of 
France and Britain over Germany. "This is a world 
of promise beyond all the promise of a thousand 
years," he wrote prophetically; "a world in which 
whoever is strong in the faith may hope everything 
that saints foresaw, or martyrs died to bring." 

All this time Dr. White was raising money for the 
Philadelphia Wards of the American Ambulance 
Hospital, and all this time he was fighting the disease 
which manifested itself more pitilessly day by day. 
He lingered in the country until November, and was 
then brought back to town, the wreck of his old gay, 
dominant self. By the close of the month a second 



THE END 261 

sum of fifteen thousand dollars had been sent to 
Paris. "Let me take this opportunity," he said in his 
announcement, "of reiterating and emphasizing my 
former statement, made after weeks of personal ob- 
servation of the workings of the hospital, — namely, 
that no money sent from America to relieve suffering, 
and to aid the cause of the Allies, does more good 
than that contributed to this institution. It is so 
efficiently and economically managed that, with a 
progressive decrease in the per capita expenses, 
there is a corresponding increase in the care and at- 
tention given to the wounded, and in the comforts 
supplied to them. 

"It is, moreover, the most conspicuously useful of 
the attempts that America has made to repay in 
some slight measure the debt of gratitude which she 
incurred to France more than a century ago." 

In December, Dr. White was taken to the Uni- 
versity Hospital. Here he spent his Christmas; and 
on Christmas eve, while he was under treatment in 
the laboratory, his friends invaded his room, and set 
up a tree hung with gifts, droll, fanciful, charming, 
as the taste of the donors prompted. Miss Marian 
Smith, the superintendent of the hospital, lent her 
affectionate co-operation to the scheme. Everything 
had to be done in haste, for the time was short. Every- 
thing was ready before the invalid returned. Fruits 
and flowers and books and boxes were heaped up in 



J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

the big, spare hospital room. The tree, with its loving 
remembrances, towered to the ceiling. The decorators 
assumed a gaiety they did not feel. When the last 
touch had been given, Mrs. White glanced around 
the pretty, glittering scene, and said sadly: "If 
friends could cure." 

With the New Year came the last determined 
effort of a resolute life, the last flicker of the flame 
which was burning low in a wasted body. Colonel 
Roosevelt was expected to speak in Philadelphia, 
January 21st, on the stern necessity of military pre- 
paredness; and Dr. White announced his intention 
of being taken home, and of receiving the Colonel as 
his guest. It seemed sheerly impossible, but his mind 
was made up. The house on the Square was opened 
wide, as in the old happy days. Its master, showing 
no sign of his mortal illness, lay on a couch in the 
library, welcoming his visitors, and watching with 
the clear eyes of unalterable devotion the friend who 
had been his beacon light through life. Political ani- 
mosities were buried deep that day, for no one who 
knew and loved the sick man failed to respond to 
this, his last call on their regard. I remember Colonel 
Roosevelt saying: "It would have seemed strange to 
me to come to any other house than this"; and Dr. 
White replying: "It is a house of pain, but it is always 
yours." 

So absolutely did strength of purpose triumph 



THE END 263 

over bodily infirmity, that to some of us it seemed as 
though the sufferer had renewed his hopes and his 
vigour in this brief contact with the world. Before 
the strange buoyancy had faded, he wrote to Effing- 
ham Morris: "I think the Colonel's visit has really 
done me good. After his speech, he returned here 
immediately, and we had a talk until 12.45 a.m. He 
spent another hour with me before he went to the 
Montgomery luncheon. I can scarcely expect you to 
see him through my spectacles; but he is one of the 
very best. The afternoon was for me a great success, 
and your cheerful and affectionate presence was by 
no means the smallest factor in it." 

After Colonel Roosevelt's visit, Dr. White never 
again left his bed-room; but his interest in all that 
appertained to his friends, his profession, the Uni- 
versity, and the war, remained unimpaired through- 
out the winter. He wrote a self-forgetful letter to 
the alumni of Pennsylvania's Medical School, on the 
occasion of their annual dinner, regretting his inabil- 
ity to be with them: 

"I do not forget that among my most pleasant and 
cherished memories are the hours I have spent in the 
company of men whom you will have at table to- 
night. I should find among them former co-workers 
in every department of University activity, and es- 
pecially in the department closest to our hearts — 
the Medical School — which came to us with a 



264 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

reputation, a distinction, a history, that entitled it 
to our devoted services. 

"Unimportant as my personal share in this work 
has been, it had for me the inestimable advantage of 
throwing me into close and intimate contact with 
successive circles of University men, and led to the 
formation of changing, but always enlarging, groups 
of very dear friends, with whom, in one way or an- 
other, a close and affectionate relationship was 
established, and has continued ever since. To these 
friends, — former students, fellow alumni, faculty 
brothers, and to all the boys, I send my best wishes 
for a successful and hilarious reunion, and my con- 
gratulations on the present abounding health and 
prosperity of our Alma Mater." 

Dr. John Mitchell read this letter to the diners, 
and wrote to Dr. White that it would have done his 
heart good to have heard the cheers which greeted 
it. Three weeks later, on University Day, came the 
annual dinner of the General Alumni Society, an- 
other gathering which he had been wont to love, and 
to which his mind strayed longingly. That he was 
not forgotten is shown by this line from Mr. Horace 
Lippincott : 

Dear Dr. White: 

The large and enthusiastic body of alumni, gath- 
ered together for their annual dinner on the evening 



THE END 265 

of University Day, heard with distress the news which 
the Provost brought them of your suffering. Stilled 
by the recital, they rose to their feet when he had 
finished, and broke into three long hurrahs for you. 
It was decided by acclamation to send you our greet- 
ing, and our sincere hopes for your speedy recovery. 
It is my privilege to write you this with the heartiest 
and best wishes of your fellow alumni. 

From England came loving letters, — cheerful, op- 
timistic letters from Sargent, and Lord Sydenham, 
and Mr. Arthur Potter, who could not be brought to 
believe that their friend was near to death; troubled 
letters from Osier and Treves, who knew, or divined, 
the truth. "There is something unusual in having 
to write to you with a bedside manner," grumbled 
Sargent; "instead of hurling jokes at you, — jokes 
that I warn you are merely delayed until a terror 
treatment is prescribed." "You must cheer up," 
wrote Mr. Potter affectionately. "We want you to 
rejoice with us in our final victory, as you have helped 
us in our hour of need." 

From one friend, Dr. White was never to hear 
again. Henry James lay very ill in London, his keen 
mind dimmed, his eager spirit groping in the dark. 
The English Government had conferred upon him 
the Order of Merit, and Lord Bryce carried it to his 
bedside on New Year's Day. Happily, the sick man 



266 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

was fully conscious of the honour done him. "He 
knew his old friends," wrote Miss Emily Sargent 
to Dr. White, " and said a few words of thanks and 
appreciation, quite in his old style. We are so very 
glad he could grasp and enjoy this pleasure." 

Osier, writing a few days later, expressed the same 
generous satisfaction in this final recognition of great 
qualities. "Was it not splendid that they gave Henry 
James the O.M., — really the highest literary dis- 
tinction in England? Everybody is delighted. Mrs. 
Asquith was asking for you the other day. Your 
martial spirit made a great impression upon those 
politicians. I wish you and Roosevelt were in the 
Cabinet. This house is still a junk shop. A hundred 
and ninety barrels of apples, and two thousand dollars, 
came to Grace at Christmas from Canada and the 
United States. We had the house full of men from 
the front, chiefly relatives. Eighteen members of my 
family are serving." 

In February, Henry James died. His death was a 
signal for a renewed attack upon him on the score of 
his renunciation of American citizenship. Again Dr. 
White came to his friend's defence. In grave and 
measured words he repelled the flippant insinuations 
of critics who betrayed more irritation than they 
would confess to cherishing. His letter to the " Phila- 
delphia Ledger " had in it a quiet depth of feeling, a 
sincere and sorrowful understanding of the situation. 



THE END 267 

He at least knew that no man was more passionately 
loyal than Mr. James to the ideals which the United 
States, in common with all free and democratic 
countries, stood pledged to cherish and support. He 
knew that it was the great novelist's cheerful and 
unvarying acceptance of all the responsibilities of 
life which made it hard for him to retain, among old 
associates, and in the face of Germany's threats, the 
safety and privileges of a neutral citizen. 

Mr. James's death was the last break in Dr. 
White's circle of intimate associates. He felt it 
acutely, though he knew that his own end was near. 
For eleven years these two men had been firm and 
happy friends. They were as unlike as men could be. 
The "rude imperious surge" and the deep land- 
locked lake could offer no greater contrast. "I am 
such a votary and victim of the single impression, 
of the imperceptible adventure, picked up by acci- 
dent, and cherished, as it were, in secret," wrote 
James to Dr. White in the spring of 1914, "that your 
scale of operation and sensation would be for me the 
most choking, the most fatal of programmes, and I 
should simply go ashore at Sumatra, and refuse ever 
to fall in line again. But that is simply my contempt- 
ible capacity, which does n't want a little of five 
million things, but only asks three or four, as to 
which, I confess, my requirements are inordinate." 

It was the war which showed how closely akin in 



268 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

elemental qualities, in all the attributes which make 
for simple, self-sustaining manhood, were these con- 
trasting types. To no heart did this titanic struggle 
strike more deeply than to Mr. James's, and to no 
mind, outside of diplomatic circles, was it given to 
see more clearly its true and final issues. He was not 
eager to beckon his own country into the combat; 
but he knew that, in the end, there could be no 
escape from the "bitter-sweet cup"; and he knew, 
too, being an American, that, when it was once pre- 
sented to our lips, we should drain it to the dregs. 
His spirits were not buoyant enough to bear the 
burden of grief; but the breadth of his human sym- 
pathy, the depth of his exhaustless compassion, were 
a revelation to the world. In this regard, he and Dr. 
White were indivisible. The counsel, old as life and 
base as sin, 

"Let us endure awhile, and see injustice done," 

carried no persuasion to their souls. They knew their 
helplessness; but there was not in the life of either 
one minute of cowardly acquiescence. 

The near approach of death was powerless to dull 
Dr. White's human interests, to weaken his affec- 
tions, to moderate his just resentments. On the 3d 
of March, less than two months before his death, he 
sent the following characteristic letter to Provost 
Smith: 



THE END 269 

Dear Edgar: 

I have received a book by David Starr Jordan, 
which, I regret to say, bears the imprint and motto 
of the University of Pennsylvania. I think it a dis- 
grace to the University to have the work of such a 
man published under its patronage. 

I am not yet aware whether or not he was invited 
to give this lecture. I suppose, if he were, it was in- 
cumbent upon us, under the terms of the Founda- 
tion, to publish it. But if the date of his invitation 
was later than eighteen months ago, I shall be ready 
to vote for a censorship* 

A man who, writing to-day, could put, as the first 
of the duties now before the world, the keeping of 
Americans out of the "Brawl in the Dark, in which 
Europe is bleeding to death," with no mention of 
the paramount duty of trying by every possible 
means to see that, as a result of the "brawl," might 
does not triumph over right, or barbarity over civi- 
lization, is not entitled to speak before a University 
audience, or to have what he says published by a 
University. I regard him as one of the most mis- 
chievous and harmful of the pacifist agitators. 

It was Professor Jordan who ventured to say in a 
college commencement address, given in the sum- 
mer of 1909: "France is, by its own admission, deca- 
dent." The remark was considered even then to be 



270 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

in questionable taste, and of questionable accuracy. 
The events of the past five years have proved it as 
false as it was foul. "War," says M. Halevy, "speaks 
with authority. It lays the foundations of history. It 
consecrates and dominates it forever." 

On the 18th of March, less than six weeks before his 
death, Dr. White sent his last letter to Effingham 
Morris. Throughout the long months of his illness 
— longer they seemed to him than all the vigor- 
ous years that had preceded them — he had shared 
with this friend the hopes he could not relinquish, 
and the doubts that beset his soul. "WTien the pain 
is bad, I know I am as ill as ever. In the blessed 
moments when I am out of pain, I think I am going 
to get well in a couple of weeks. And so it goes." 

All hope was dead when he wrote for the last time, 
and his concern was not then for himself, but for a 
young physician whom he liked and trusted, and 
for whom he sought a post on the visiting staff of 
the Presbyterian Hospital. Enclosed with this letter 
was a more formal communication, addressed to the 
Board of Managers of the Hospital, in which he set 
forth with all his old energy, and with more than 
his old kindness, Dr. Carnett's fitness for the ap- 
pointment. The shadow of death fell across his bed 
when he made this brave effort to help a man whose 
life lay bright before him; yet in April he roused 
himself to write twice again. The first letter was 



THE END 271 

to Provost Smith, urging him to interest himself in 
Dr. Carnett's behalf, and ended with these pregnant 
words: "I really want you to do this for me, and at 
this juncture shall make no excuse for not doing more 
myself." 

The second letter was to Mr. Samuel Rea, and its 
dictation must have cost the dying man a great and 
painful effort: 

"I have just heard, in reference to the candidacy 
of my friend, Dr. J. B. Carnett, for the surgical 
vacancy of the Presbyterian Hospital, that he has 
been handicapped by the statement, widely made, 
that Pennsylvania Railroad influences have been 
lined up in his behalf through my individual efforts, 
and that they are not to be taken at their face value 
as testimony to Carnett's real ability, experience, and 
general fitness for the place. 

"I write at once to call attention to the impropri- 
ety of this attitude so far as I am concerned. As the 
Pennsylvania Railroad has done me the honour of 
giving me an important position on its staff, and of 
accepting my judgment in many surgical matters, it 
is apparent that its directors think enough of my 
knowledge and experience to justify the expectation 
that they would also value my opinion of the work, 
professional character, and standing of a man brought 
up under my own eye, and whose career I have 
watched with especial interest and attention." 



272 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

Nine days after writing this letter, Dr. White died. 
He had suffered such appalling pain, he was so worn 
and so profoundly helpless, that those who loved 
him best were least desirous to prolong that brave 
and broken life. To the end he was keen to see his old 
associates, and to hear news of the world which was 
slipping fast away from him. Every morning, Tom 
Robins, his brother, and his cousin, Sam White, the 
unchanging friend of his boyhood and his youth, 
came to his bedside, and brought some breath of a 
happier life. Every day, as the end drew near, Dr. 
Alfred Wood, Dr. Martin, and Dr. Stengel issued 
bulletins which were posted in the vestibule of his 
home, and read by throngs of anxious visitors. At 
the close, pneumonia intervened, and death came 
mercifully to the man who had waited for it so long, 
and whose only hope lay in its healing hand. 

Dr. White died in a time of supreme national de- 
pression. He had seen nearly two years of war, and 
every month had brought fresh evidence of Germany's 
cruelty in Europe, her treachery in the United States, 
her ruthlessness (punctuated by broken promises and 
suave explanations) on the seas, her profound and 
brutal contempt for the laws of civilized nations. 
He had lived through the period when cranks of 
every description proposed ingenious — and blood- 
less — plans for bringing the struggle to an end; 
when delegations of children were sent to Washing- 



THE END 273 

ton, to ask the President to keep us out of war; 
when every fresh outrage was met by fresh apologists. 
There were, indeed, Americans of a different type, 
men who never consented to neutrality, who never 
believed that a purifying ocean cleansed them from 
all sense of human obligation. In December, 1914, 
Mr. James M. Beck, speaking before the New Eng- 
land Society of New York, urged that the United 
States should call a conference of the neutral powers, 
and voice a protest which would have stayed Ger- 
many's bloody hand. "But I confess," wrote this 
great lawyer to me, "that I did not advocate a 
declaration of war by the United States until after 
the Lusitania was sunk. Dr. White did. And as this 
subjected him to a storm of ridicule at the time, it is 
only just to his memory to note that he was, so far 
as I am aware, the first wholly courageous soul in 
America, the first with full vision." 

There is no "full vision" in this darkened world. 
Dr. White would have died more serenely had he 
known what no one could know, that the soul of 
the nation, seemingly inert under provocation, was 
slowly hardening itself to meet an incredible situa- 
tion. It was ready for the fight before the call came, 
and the glad rush to the colours showed how bitter 
the waiting had been. That we had no idea how to 
wage war was natural enough; we had to learn, as 
Britain learned, taught by our own blunders. But 



274 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

through the unutterable confusion of those first 
months there was no faltering of the spirit. The 
sense of relief was too profound, the escape from the 
pit was too blessed. Alas, and alas, for the brave and 
honest men who died before the day of deliverance. 

It was a shadow of heroic grief resting upon the 
close of a life which had been happy and prosperous, 
dignified by achievement, crowned by success. Dr. 
White had risen to eminence in his profession. He 
had held for twelve years the John Rhea Barton 
Chair of Surgery, in the University of Pennsylva- 
nia. He had performed many delicate and dangerous 
operations, and his patients had survived to call him 
blessed. He had made important contributions to 
the literature of surgery. He was an authority in his 
chosen field. His enthusiasm for athletics triumphed 
over the prejudice of teachers, and the indifference 
of the public. He was a pioneer in this great move- 
ment which has revolutionized and reformed student 
life. The University Gymnasium stands as a per- 
manent monument of his wisdom and devotion, of 
his generous sympathy with youth, and his healthy 
understanding of what it means to be young. 

He was girt by inflexible limitations. There are pro- 
found emotions which have moved the world, and 
there are delicate nuances which define areas of 
thought and taste, to which he held no clue. But the 
essentials of manhood — the things without which 



THE END 275 

there is no man — were all his. He was brave, truth- 
ful, sincere, loyal to his friends and to his country, 
and pitiful to the suffering. His personal feelings, his 
likings and animosities, were very strong. 

"A hedge around his friends, 
A hackle to his foes." 

Perhaps the number of foes was increased by the 
fact that he never struck in the dark, no matter how 
easy the chance; but waged an open warfare, pre- 
senting himself as a shining target for missiles. On 
the other hand, his friends loved him heartily and 
tenaciously; his patients knew his kindness and his 
worth; nurses and internes in the hospital were keen 
— for all his imperiousness — to work under him; 
and close professional associates, like Dr. Alfred 
Wood, gave him unstinted devotion. 

Above and beyond all other qualities must be 
reckoned his courageous acceptance and enjoyment 
of life. He feared it as little as he feared death. He 
never held back his hand from its favours because 
they carry danger in their wake. He never inquired 
too curiously if the game were worth the candle. He 
took royally what was his, and paid the price in full. 
There is a matchless sentence of Mr. Chesterton's 
which describes, as no words of mine can ever de- 
scribe, this sane and valorous attitude: "The truest 
kinship with humanity lies in doing as humanity has 
always done, accepting with sportsmanlike relish the 



276 J. WILLIAM WHITE, M.D. 

estate to which we are called, the star of our happi- 
ness, and the fortunes of the land of our birth." 

These gifts Dr. White took unshrinkingly from the 
hand of fate, and of them he built the strong and 
splendid fabric of his life. 



THE END 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Abbey, Edwin Austin, 73, 107, 108, 

109, 148, 165, 166, 168, 184, 185, 

186, 195 
Abbey, Mary Gertrude Mead, 195, 

196 
Adalbert, Prince, 206, 207 
Adams, Charles Francis, 175 
Adams, Robert, 42, 45, 46 
Agassiz, Elizabeth Cabot Cary, 10, 

17, 24 
Agassiz, Jean Louis Rodolphe. 8, 

13, 14, 17, 23, 24 
Agnew, Dr. David Hayes, 39, 40, 

41, 56, 64, 65, 71, 88, 189, 204 
Albert, Heinrich Friedrich, 232 
Alexandra, Queen, 108 
Ashbridge, Dr. R. William, 42 
Asquith, Emma Alice Margaret 

Tennant, 240, 266 
Asquith, Hon. Herbert Henry, 240 
Audubon, John James, 11 
Austen, Jane, 120 

Baldwin, Edward, 33 
Barbauld, Anna Letitia, 3 
Bartholow, Dr. Roberts, 66 
Beck, James Montgomery, 231, 273 
Bell, John, 75 
Bergmann, Dr. von, 56 
Bernhard, Dr., 205 
Bernstorff, Johann Heinrich, Count 

von, 193, 227, 258 
Biddle, Hon. Craig, 187 
Biddle, Katharine, 188 
Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine, 44 
Bodley, Dr. Rachel L., 40 
Borden, Sir Robert Laird, 252 
Brown, Benjamin H., 52 
Brownell, William Crary, 53. 197 
Browning, Robert, 22 



Buller, Gen. Rt. Hon. Sir Redvers 

Henry, 250 
Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 93 

Caesar, 93 

Carlyle, 256 

Carnett, Dr. J. B., 270, 271 

Cassidy, Michael, 32 

Cato, 93 

Caudron, M., 245 

Chambers, James S., 40 

Chapman, John Jay, 234 

Chesterton, Gilbert Keith, 275 

Cicero, 93 

Clark, Dr. John G., 181 

Cleeman, Richard A., 68 

Clement XIII, Pope, 154 

Cret, Paul, 209 

Crile, Dr. George W., 236 

Cross, J. W., 185 

Daly, Charles, 98 

Darwin, Charles Robert, 18 

Davidson, Most Rev. Randall 
Thomas, Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, 249 

Davies, Hubert Henry, 242 

Delaune, Gideon, 163 

Delme-Radcliffe, Brig. -Gen. Charles, 
114, 115 

Delme-Radcliffe, Enid Margery, 
103, 115 

Dernburg, Dr. Bernhard, 231, 232 

Dickens, Charles, 93 

Disfurth, General von, 234 

Drexel, Anthony, 212 

Du Cane, Col. Sir Edmund, 69 

Dumba, Dr. Constantin Theodor, 
258 

Dunne, Peter Finley, 203 



280 



INDEX 



Eakins, Thomas, 40, 113 

Edward VII, King, 99, 108, 151, 

184, 193, 250 
Eliot, Dr. Charles William, 91 
Eliot, George, 185 

Fagon, Gui Crescent, 54 

Fisher, Alice, 48, 49, 50 

Fitler, Mayor, 67 

Foote, Samuel, 44 

Ford, Henry, 237 

Franklin, Benjamin, 71, 80, 81 

Frazier, Dr. Charles H., 140, 181 

Fuller, Thomas, 169 

Furness, Horace Howard, 144, 149, 

158, 159, 190 
Furness, Dr. William H., 237 

Gaekwar of Baroda, 214, 215 
Garretson, Dr. James E., 66 
George V, King, 109, 215, 233 
Gibbon, Edward, 53, 93 
Gilbert, Sir William S., 94 
Gladstone, William Ewart, 93 
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 93 
Goodell, Dr. William, 71 
Guiteras, Dr. John, 70 

Halevy, Daniel, 270 

Hals, Frans, 111 

Hardy, Thomas, 164 

Harrison, Alfred, 57 

Harrison, Charles Custis, 117, 123, 

193 
Harte, Francis Bret, 77 
Havemeyer, Theodore, 75 
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 53 
Hays, Dr., 249 
Heinemann, Dr., 130, 132 
Held, Anna, 244 

Henderson, Lt. Gen. Sir David, 240 
Hill, Dr. Thomas, 8, 10, 14, 15, 24 
Holland, Dr. J. W., 66 
Holland, Hon. Sydney, 99 
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 22, 69 
Holt, Sir Herbert S., 252 
Hope, Anthony, 240 



Horner, Edith, 49 
Howell, James, 53 
Hughes, Gen. Sir Sam, 252 
Hutchinson, Dr. James P., 236, 
239 

Imadate, Tosui, 220 
Irvine, Major, 247 
Ivens, Marion L., 141 

James I, King, 163 

James, Henry, 118, 119, 120, 129, 
133, 144, 146, 151, 155, 161, 163, 
169, 180, 184, 186, 195, 197, 202, 
207, 222, 223, 234, 240. 244, 250, 
251, 257, 265, 266, 267, 268 

James, William, 184 

Johnson, John G., 182, 183. 

Johnson, Capt. Philip C, 24 

Johnson, Samuel, 44, 169 

Jordan, David Starr, 269 

Joseph, Sister Mary, 142 

Jusserand, Jean Adrien Aubin Jules, 
228, 232 

Kant, Immanuel, 93 

Kauffmann, Maria Angelica, 163 

Keen, Dr. William Williams, 71, 181 

Kempis, Thomas a, 58 

Keogh, Sur.-Gen. Sir Alfred, 251 

Kernochan, James, 75 

King, Mayor, 50 

Kipling, J. Rudyard, 192 

Kirk, John Foster, 133 

Kitchener, Horatio Herbert, Earl 

Kitchener of Khartoum, 196 
Koch, Dr. Robert, 69 
Kuhn, Hartman C, 55 

Laking, Sir Francis Henry, 108, 163 

Lambert, John, 113 

Lane, Sir Hugh, 235 

Larrey, Jean Dominique, Baron, 39 

Lawson, Thomas William, 31 

Lee, Richard, "Beaver Dick," 62, 

63 
Lee, Sir Sidney, 240, 251 



INDEX 



281 



Lesley, Station-Master, San Pablo, 

23 
Lippincott, Horace, 264 
Lister, Joseph, Lord, 53, 55, 57, 144 
Littre, Maximilien Paul fimile, 93 
Long, Dr. Crawford Williamson, 200 
Louis XIV, King, 54 
Luther, Martin, 255 

Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 5, 

22 
McCracken, Dr. Joseph, 220 
McKenzie, Dr. R. Tait, 117, 118, 

200 
McLean, Billy, 33, 121, 122 
McMurtrie, Richard, 68 
McNally, Peter, 74 
Mahmoud, dragoman, 213 
Mahomet, 157 

Makins, Col. Sir George, 246, 247 
Maris, John M. f 30 
Marshall, Dr. Clara, 66 
Martin, Anna Withers, 181 
Martin, Dr. Edward, 88, 136, 140, 

147, 167, 181, 182, 189, 222, 233 
Martin, Edward Sandford, 259, 260 
Mary, Queen of England, 215 
Masefield, John, 82 
Max Miiller, Wanda Maria, 229 
Mayo, Dr. William J., 139, 141, 142 
Meynell, Alice, 116 
Mitchell, Dr. John Kearsley, 264 
Mitchell, Dr. S. Weir, 92, 113, 161, 

219 
Montaigne, Michel Ey quern de, 184 
Montgomery, Col. Robert, 263 
Mordkin, Michael, 185 
More, Hannah, 168 
Morris, Effingham B., 104, 166, 

173, 176, 177, 202, 240, 263, 270 
Morris, Harrison S., 131 
Morton, Mary F., 119, 120, 121 
Moynihan, Sir Berkeley George 

Andrew, 196 
Munyon, James M., 178 
Murillo, Bartolome Esteban, 72 
Musser, Dr. John Herr, 70 



Napoleon Bonaparte, 215 
Nearing, Scott, 255, 256, 257 

Oelrichs, Charles, 74 

Orthwein, W. J., 106, 107, 116, 171, 

206 
Osier, Grace Revere, Lady, 229, 

266 
Osier, Sir William, 104, 126, 131, 

132, 133, 136, 162, 168, 195, 196, 

228, 229, 250, 265, 266 

Page, S. David, 52 
Page, William Bird, 52 
Paine, John, 106, 107, 116, 171 
Pappenheim, Maximilian, Count 

von, 55 
Paul, Oglesby, 209 
Pavlova, Anna, 185 
Peirce, Benjamin, 7 
Penn, William, 94, 166 
Pennypacker, Samuel Whitaker, 

233 
Penrose, Boies, 2d, 177, 178 
Penrose, Dr. Charles Bingham, 59, 

61, 167, 177 
Penrose, Katharine Drexel, 61 
Pepper, George Wharton, 75, 199 
Pepper, Dr. William, 64, 65, 70, 189 
Peter the Great, 6 
Phelps, William Lyon, 83 
Pitkin, Dr., 25, 26 
Pius X, Pope, 142 
Potter, Arthur, 265 
Pourtales, Count Francois de, 8 

Ralston, Robert, 74 

Rea, Samuel, 271 

Roberts, Frederick Sleigh Roberts, 

Lord, 196 
Roberts, Rev. William Henry, 193 
Robins, Marie Ringold, 95 
Robins, Thomas, 36, 91, 99, 123, 
124, 125, 132, 134, 135, 136, 137, 
142, 148, 152, 161, 166, 167, 170, 
174, 193, 201, 202, 204, 210, 235, 
243, 255, 272 



INDEX 



Roosevelt, Theodore, 5, 97, 98, 99, 
123, 124, 174, 175, 176, 201, 202, 
203, 204, 215, 245, 258, 259, 262, 
263, 266 

Root, Elihu, 183 

Rush, Benjamin, 2 

Salisbury, Robert Arthur Talbot 
Gascoyne Cecil, Marquis of, 250 

Samson, 93 

Sargent, Emily, 266 

Sargent, John Singer, 72, 73, 109, 
113, 132, 144, 152, 162, 168, 169, 
178, 179, 180, 184, 186, 196, 202, 
210, 222, 223, 234, 235, 240, 251, 
265 

Scott, Sir Walter, 64, 93 

Selkirk, Alexander, 19 

Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley 
Cooper, Earl of, 226 

Silly, General, 39 

Simpson, Sir James, 200, 201 

Sims, John Clark, 100 

Siter, Mrs. Edward, 209 

Smith, Edgar Fahs, 193, 208, 265, 
268, 271 

Smith, Edward B., 175, 242, 253 

Smith, Marian E., 261 

Smith, Rev. William, 149, 150 

Socrates, 92 

Stanford, Leland, 19 

Steindachner, Dr. Franz, 24 

Stengel, Dr. Alfred, 125, 140, 181, 
272 

Sternburg, Baron von, 123 

Stevenson, Sara Yorke, 94 

Stockton, Mary, 1 

Stockton, Richard, 1 

Sydenham, George Sydenham 
Clarke, Lord, 257, 265 

Taft, William Howard, 174, 202 
Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 92 
Thackeray, William Makepeace, 92 
Thayer, William Roscoe, 231 
Thompson, Capt. R. C, 247 
Townsend, Charles H., 42 



Townsend, Edward, 32 

Treves, Annie Mason, Lady, 102, 
115, 164 

Treves, Sir Frederick, 53, 55, 58, 
59, 76, 77, 81, 82, 99, 101, 102, 
103, 107, 108, 114, 115, 134, 140, 
144, 148, 150, 161, 163, 164, 168, 
233, 242, 265 

Tyson, Dr. James, 70 

Unwin, Fisher, 240 

Van Dyke, Henry, 91 

Van Valkenburg, Edward, 203 

Vaux, Richard, 30 

Velasquez, Diego Rodriguez de 

Silva Y., Ill 
Verne, Jules, 12 

Waller, Edmund, 89 
Walpole, Horace, 97 
Washington, George, 123 
Weightman, William, 117 
Wells, Herbert George, 240 
Weston, Edward Payson, 172 
Wharton, Edith, 98, 244 
Wharton, Dr. H. R., 68 
Whistler, James McNeill, 195 
White, Henry, 1 

White, Dr. James William, 1, 67 
White, Katherine E., 85, 187, 188 
White, Letitia, 52, 53, 58, 59, 61, 
72, 81, 83, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 
111, 113, 116, 119, 125, 127, 128, 
129, 139, 147, 148, 153, 155, 156, 
164, 168, 171, 172, 177, 180, 187, 
194, 206, 210, 211, 212, 214, 224, 
238, 240, 251, 253, 262 
White, Louis, 19, 20 
White, Mary A. McClaranan, 2, 

3,4 
White, Samuel S., 272 
White, Samuel S., Senior, 39 
White, Samuel S., Junior, 143, 

272 
Whitney, Caspar, 75 
Wilhelm (Friedrich Wilhelm Victor 



INDEX 



283 



Albrecht), German Emperor, 123, 

193, 206, 227, 231 
Wilson, Alan, 170 
Wilson, Thomas Woodrow, 201 
Wister, Owen, 113, 175, 201 
Wood, Alexander, 42 



Wood, Dr. Alfred C, 139, 140, 141, 

272, 275 
Wood, Dr. Horatio C, 7, 71 
Wordsworth, William, 93 

Young, Brigham, 27 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



